Lucky Billy

by John Vernon

  It was morning in Lincoln. Wood and charcoal smoke hung in the air. The throat-scratching dust of Lincoln's single street was so perniciously fine it rose like a vapor when disturbed by marching heels. People watched from their porches and weedy yards when the three men of justice swaggered up the road past Tunstall's store, rifles cradled in their arms. The Dolans and Murphs were still inside that store attaching Tunstall's property even though he was dead. At the door, Jim Longwell spit brown chew on the street and caught Billy's eye as he passed; the Kid sneered. Ahead, the Dolan store sat at the end of town, the only two-story building for many miles around—it would later become the county courthouse—and Billy observed that its front porch and door had been placed under guard by buffalo soldiers. The Negro men in blue stared without expression as Fred and Billy approached, Martínez trailing behind. Their white Lieutenant DeLany ordered them to halt. Martínez caught up and stepped forward. "We have warrants to arrest some men inside this store."

  "What men?"

  He read the list: Jesse Evans, Tom Hill, George Hindman, James Dolan, Billy Morton, and others not identified by the witnesses.

  "How can you arrest unidentified men?"

  "We'll know them when we see them," Billy said.

  "None of the men you name are here."

  "This is Dolan's store. Dolan must be here."

  "Mr. Dolan's life would not be worth a farthing if turned over to you."

  Deadpan, the buffalo soldiers watched. Martínez, trying to look fierce, nearly shrieked, "How is it Dolan rates protection from the army when he's wanted for murder? Please explain that to me."

  "He ain't wanted for murder. You got a drunken alcalde to issue those warrants and they don't mean dick. I'm just doing a job here. I'm here to prevent the destruction of property and the loss of more lives. Last night a mob fired on my men and killed a horse. You want to go in there? Go ahead and go in there. These men are intemperate—" The lieutenant now shifted his attention to a crowd who'd followed the three, raising his voice. "You are my witnesses. I tried to protect them but they won't listen. Well, it's their funeral." He grandly stepped aside and ordered his men to make way for this "posse," contemptuously placing the word inside quotes, and Martínez marched forward, followed by Fred and Billy.

  Eight or nine rifles simultaneously levered when they kicked the door open. Martínez made his announcement anyway. "We have reason to believe there is murderers in here. I intend to serve these papers."

  "Go ahead and serve them."

  Billy looked around. Stumpy James Dolan stood behind the counter, his doughnut lips smiling. Gauded up in a California hat and a black sateen shirt whose placket was laced with flat leather strings underneath his wool coat, he sighted down his six-gun directly at the Kid. To one side was Buck Morton on the end of a Winchester, to the other Sheriff Brady, while fanning out around them, some behind the counter, some five feet away on the sanded floor, some behind pickle barrels, one before a coffee mill with large iron wheels, each with a carbine, a rifle, or a pistol, were the other Dolanites all drawing beads. A dozen fingers on a dozen polished triggers, a dozen squinty eyes, a dozen hard pricks, a dozen tight serotinus, a dozen oscillating knees. Martínez took a giant step and put his papers on the counter. "Well. I'll save my spit."

  "Don't you want to read them?" Brady asked.

  "It says to arrest you. Every man jack."

  "You can't arrest a duly authorized posse. You ought to know that, Constable. But I can arrest you. I've done it all the time. You come here to terrorize peaceful citizens and I won't have it."

  Billy looked at William Brady, senior statesman of the Dolanites. "Peaceful be fucked."

  "Who's this lick-twat?" asked Dolan. "Is that you, Antrim? I remember you now. You're Judas to my Jesus, I've been told."

  "Kiss my ass."

  "Surrender your guns," Sheriff Brady said.

  "Go ahead and take them, you son of a bitch."

  The three were disarmed of their pistols and rifles, including Billy's favorite Winchester. He stood in the middle of James Dolan's store, eyes feeling sneaky, not entirely sure what to do with his hands or how to reestablish his swaggering airs or at least maintain his dignity of bearing when his heart was in his boots. This was not how they'd planned it. Billy Matthews lowered his carbine and slapped Fred's shoulder and tried to raise the tone. "You boys given us a good meal down there at the Englishman's ranch and we would like to reciprocate before we have you ironed. We're low on chuck but would whiskey do the trick?"

  Fred looked at a wall. "I'm not normally a drinker."

  "Just because we don't hold with John Bull ways and you're a bunch of limey heathens and one of you's a turncoat don't mean we can't be friends. Fetch that bucket, Billy."

  "Fetch it yourself."

  "Fetch the goddamn bucket!"

  Matthews wasn't looking at anyone named Billy but he did sound impatient. All the others had lowered their weapons. Men began to move. The pail in question sat beside a saddle rack beyond the counter's edge. The Kid shrugged, dragged his feet, tried to swagger toward the whiskey but his quick hand caught the handle of the bucket simultaneously with Morton's, who'd strolled behind the counter at an equal clip. The two glared at each other—Tunstall's friend and Tunstall's killer. "He said Billy," said the Kid.

  "Well, my name is Billy," Buck Morton said. "You ain't no Billy. You're Kid Antrim."

  "I go by Kid but my name is William Bonney."

  "You're pulling my leg. I know your name."

  "Just bring me the cocksucking bucket, would you please?" Both men lifted the bucket and started for Matthews but one Billy geed while the other hawed and some whiskey sloshed out. "And take care with it, would you?"

  Morton said, "Folks around here call me Buck but all of you know that my given name is Billy."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Which one's Billy, then?" asked Dolan.

  "I am."

  "Me."

  "My given name is Jacob," said Matthews. "My daddy just started calling me Billy. Some folks, though, it don't make any difference what their given name is. They'll change it and think everyone is fooled."

  "That's true," said Brady. "I myself favor William. Billy's always sounded gutter rat to me. Why anyone would choose it?"

  Both men looked at the Kid.

  "Here, moisten your tongue," Matthews said to Martínez, handing him a cup. "Drink it down."

  "What do you call this whiskey?" asked Martínez.

  "I call it, 'Mother I'm Dying Can I Have a Piece of Pie.'" Matthews tried to smile but his pinched face just sneered. His overgrown mustache hung halfway to his chin and the V of his brow gripped his glower hard and caused the end of his fat nose to buckle.

  Billy Morton, on the other hand, looked handsome and young, being only twenty-two. A choirboy smile—just like the Kid. But he'd been the one to fire first at Mr. Tunstall, the Kid felt sure of it. Cherubically, Morton cocked his head and frowned and took the cup from Matthews—the one intended for Martínez—and sucked it down, then looked at the constable. "Will you drink some now? It's not poisoned, I guess. It will moisten your tongue."

  "It's moist enough already."

  "Give the crawthumper some." The Kid nodded at Dolan. "Then we'll know for sure if it's poisoned or not."

  "You got a sassy mouth."

  "And you got a big one. Size matters."

  A head above Dolan, standing behind him, Sheriff Brady laughed in his boots.

  The drinks were passed around. For every half cup thrown clown by Dolan's men, the trio drank two—that was the rule of hospitality announced by Billy Matthews. "What proof is this?" Fred slurred at one point.

  "Muchwhat a hundred," Billy Matthews said.

  By the time they were marched through Lincoln to the jail, Billy, Fred, and the constable were slittering like gut-shots. They couldn't keep a straight line. The whole town fell out to watch the parade and the Dolanite triumph. Even in his cups, Billy knew there was a reason
Dolan's store and Sheriff Brady's office were at one end of town and the jail at the other: it was these public processionals, these caravans of shame, displayed before the citizens. One Dolanite, John Hurley, stomped clown the road dancing and twirling and shouting, "Ya-haa! Three turkeys in a hole." Inside the jail, when Brady opened the trapdoor and shoved his captives down the ladder then pulled the ladder up and looked down at the three, he calmly observed, "You got a lot to learn, boys."

  ***

  "I THOUGHT WE could just arrest those bastards. I thought alls we need's a warrant."

  "Just like Macky," Fred said.

  "Don't equate me with him. He is game is not mine."

  "What do you mean?" In the darkness, Fred's voice sounded even deeper: a rumble-drone filling the gorge in his throat.

  "My game," said the Kid, "is to march right up to that miserable wart and shoot him in the teeth."

  "You mean Morton?"

  "Morton-Evans'n-Hill. James Dolan. Sheriff Brady. All of them, especially Morton. He fired the first shot at Mr. Tunstall, Fred."

  "How do you know?"

  "I can see it in his eyes. He's a son of a bitch. He thought I was muscling in on his girl last year at one of Dolan's cow camps."

  "Morton did?"

  "Yes."

  "And that's why you think he fired the first shot?"

  The Lincoln jail was a chosa, ten feet deep. No light. Heavy square timbers lined the underground wall to which their shackles were bolted. The dirt floor on which they sat was cold and smelly—the brimming thunder-mug stank—and the air felt both damp and dry in winter: damp inside bones, dry on a throat. One thing, it sobered you up pretty quick. Leaning back against the wall, their heads in a vise, their dry tongues tasting of carrion and muck, all Billy and Fred could manage was talk. Martínez was gone. Brady had returned after just a few hours and released him without a word to the others. "What about us?" Billy shouted. "I know what they're planning," he told Fred now. "They're footing up in their minds how much it costs to feed us. It would be cheaper for them to cut Juan Patrón's acequia and flood this damn dungeon and drown us good."

  "That's one way not to have to feed prisoners," said Fred. "The other way is set them free and tell them to run and shoot them in the back. I lam Mills did that with a nigger he arrested because he didn't want to guard him all night. He had a dance to go to. What was that all about at Dolan's store?"

  "What was what all about?"

  "You and Billy Morton."

  "He's like a little brother. He thinks the way to get your goat is to copy what you say. 'I'm Billy.' 'I'm Billy.'"

  "He said it first."

  "Both of us is Billies. There's plenty of Billies."

  "I've been thinking about that. There's so many Billies if someone's on the dodge alls he has to do is name himself Billy. Best way to lose yourself to the law."

  "That's what I did."

  "Or name yourself Kid."

  "I did that too."

  "Billy Bevens. Heard of him?"

  "Can't say that I have."

  "Him and Billy Webster in Wyoming. They run with Sam Bass for a while. Bill Heffridge in Nebraska, also a Basser. Bill Bailey, shot on the street in Newton, Kansas. Curly Bill Brocius in Tombstone. Captain Billy Coe in Colorado."

  "Is he kin to George and Frank?"

  "Not that I know of. Billy Mullin. Billy Grounds. John Wesley Hardin's sidekick, Billy Cohron. Billy Dixon, also part of Hardin's crew. Lucky Bill Thorrington in Nevada and his chum Billy Edwards, both hung by vigilantes. Fly-specked Billy in South Dakota. There's a shitload of Billies. Wild Bill Hickok, you've heard of him."

  "Of course."

  "Billy Mayfield in Carson City, who carved a big hole in Sheriff Blackburn's belly. Texas Billy Thompson in Abilene. Bill Anderson in Wichita. Bill Bowen in Texas. Wild Bill Longley in Texas. Billy Sutton, also in Texas. 'I will wash my hands in Billy Sutton's blood,' said Jim Taylor, and he did, too. Billy Wren of Lampasas. Hurricane Bill Martin from Abilene. Bully Bill Brooks of Dodge City who wore a star when he wasn't stealing horses. There's a Billy the Kid in Tombstone, Billy; last name, Clairborne."

  "Never heard of him."

  "Billy Leroy in Colorado, also referred to as Billy the Kid. You could fool a lot of people if you called yourself that."

  "I'm pretty happy with William H. Bonney."

  "Where'd you get that name, anyway?"

  "Picked it out of a hat. I don't know, I can't recall. There's a lot of Franks, too, ain't it?"

  "I haven't made a study of that. There's a lot of Kids. Kid this, Kid that. Kid Dobbs, the Catfish Kid, Harry the Kid, the Mormon Kid, Kid Wade, Kid Vance, the Pockmarked Kid. Plenty of Kids."

  "Fine with me."

  "Around here there's Billy Matthews, Sheriff William Brady, Buck Morton says his name is Billy, Bill McCloskey, Billy Wier—I'm leaving some out. Billy Burt. There's Billy Campbell, the one that shot Tom King. There was Billy Wilson. He shorten Robert Casey, remember? Had to be hung twice? Now there's another Billy Wilson entirely, up to Fort Sumner. And he calls himself the Kid."

  "I've met him. There was a Billy Wilson in Silver City too."

  "Then you're just another Billy. Is that what you're after?"

  "I don't know what I'm after."

  "Men are like shadows."

  "Shadows of what?"

  Fred didn't answer. Billy raised his arms and waved them around to keep up the circulation.

  "So which are you?" Fred asked.

  "Which what?"

  "Which Billy?"

  "I'm the made-up one."

  Both men sat in silence. After a while, Fred asked, "You don't feel like a fraud?"

  "No sir."

  "I do all the time."

  "That doesn't mean I do."

  "What's that breeze?"

  "I'm moving my arms."

  "Can't you keep still? You're as restless as a bedbug."

  "I didn't know Billy Wilson had to be hung twice."

  "This Mexican woman opens the coffin and screams he's alive. So they hang him again."

  "What a way to die."

  "There's worse. Being burned at the stake, I wouldn't like that."

  "I saw a gambler once got his head chopped off. It took three or four good whacks. The head was still trying to scream when it was off."

  "A doctor during the French Revolution measured the time a head stayed alive after it was guillotined. Some, the eyes move around, the mouth whispers something. Some of them stayed alive for fifteen seconds. But every time the doctor puts his ear to a mouth he can't quite hear the whisper. Can't make out what he's saying."

  "Fred, how come you know about so many Billies? You sure as hell have quite an equipment of names."

  "So do you, Kid. I've kicked around a lot. I've been all over. You pick it up gradually, all the names people say. I began in Indian Territory first, wandered to Texas."

  "Did you cowboy there?"

  "I never took to that life."

  "Nor I."

  "I hunted buffalo instead."

  "What was that like?"

  "A pretty good living until one morning you wake up and look around and there's no more buffalo. And just last week you saw a regular ocean of red and white carcasses rotting on the plains. I've seen their bodies so thick after being skinned it looked like a bunch of logs from a hurricane. And before that, see, when they were alive, you never saw so many buffalo. They covered the plains from here to the horizon. You'd look out there and see the ground itself moving. I suppose it never occurred to us then that we could use them all up."

  "What did you have for a weapon?"

  "Well, the Springfields was too much like the army. I tried that Sharps that fired the three eighty grain bullet but it wasn't accurate. They fixed it to a forty-four caliber with less lead but the trouble with that was the cartridge case leaked. It blinded some men. So they chop it down to a forty caliber and put the lead back up to three hundred and eighty with a hundred and twenty grains of powder an
d this one has a cartridge case that's straight instead of bottlenecked. That's the one I used. It was good. Too good. I shot and shot and never thought about a thing and eventually shot myself out of a job."

  Darkness. Silence. Time either passed or found itself becalmed. When Fred spoke again a bright red mouth opened deep inside Billy's sleeping brain. "So you're from Arizona."

  "Silver City, Fred. Arizona was a breather."

  "I forgot Silver City."

  "And Kansas before that."

  "Kansas?"

  "Wichita. And before that, Indiana. And New York City before Indiana. But I prefer here."

  "New York? I've always heard about that place. What's it like there?"

  "It's like castrating elephants."

  8. 1878

  War

  OUTSIDE IN THE DARK, Juan Patrón's acequia thinned to a silence. The water still flowed but its unyielding sameness had drained it of sound. Like whittling a stick till there's nothing left to whittle—that's how Billy understood it. To be conscious of not consciously hearing a sound that nonetheless is somehow clearly there could drive you crazy, just the same. Best not to think about it. "Did the Greeks get paid?" he asked.

  "I haven't researched that."

  "First time I ever got paid for sitting in a jail."

  "How much did Macky promise us?"

  "Three dollars a day."

  Fred had been telling him about the Trojans and the Greeks but in the middle of the night it sounded like a dream. The Kid judged it must be the middle of the night from the waves of unconsciousness lapping his mind, not from the lack of light—the jail was pitch-dark both day and night. And Fred's deep voice always sounded dreamy. The jail felt warmer now. Night air didn't penetrate its underground pit, whose uniform temperature resembled a root cellar's. The Trojans and Greeks foughten a big war and no one was paid, instead they whacked up the spoils. The Trojans were under siege in their palace and the Greeks were attacking them. "So which are we?"

  "I guess we'll find out," said Fred. "We're the English, they're the Irish."

  "McSween's a Scotchman."

  "Same thing."

  "And you're a redskin."