Lucky Billy

by John Vernon

  After Kitty and her son left, Mac stood there in the parlor holding on to the string. The rat hung by its tail. Sue sat at her desk. She was writing, he could tell by the press of her shoulders. Sue had recourse to expedients. Her life did not lack, even in the midst of war, for consolations. And Mac had learned to avail himself of her comforts, if only by proxy. For example, she kept parallel diaries, one official, one private. One in a cubby of her rolltop desk, the other in a velvet box hidden inside a false-bottomed drawer with her Pike's Magnolia. One for daylight, one for night. One innocuous, one shameful. One to be discovered and read by her husband, the other a secret, but he'd discovered them both. He could even tell which she was writing now. Her shoulder bore down but didn't crab up, this must have been the public one.

  ***

  JULY 18, 1878. It is the Murphy-Dolan crowd who is to blame for our boys adopting this way of getting a living. Fred Waite, the Kid, good-natured Tom O'Folliard—what would they be without this wretched war? They are all good-natured, rollicking boys, always singing and full of fun. Mr. McSween, of course, did not approve at all of the killing of Sheriff Brady. Quite naturally, the killing of the representative of justice has turned many friends against us and did our side much harm in the public mind. Those of the party who did this shooting, and have bragged of the fact, now must defend us, and this situation we must accept. Nor was Andrew L. Roberts's death anything but senseless; he was on his way out of the territory at the time. In our eye-for-an-eye world, it resulted in the murder of Richard Brewer, as fine a young man as ever lived. On the other side is the fact that Brady and Roberts, William Morton, Frank Baker, Manuel Segovia, Charles Crawford, Mr. Hindman, all were hand and glove with the Dolan faction, which openly flaunts justice and law. In their effort to check the inroads that Mr. McSween and Mr. Tunstall were making into their schemes to get money by hook or crook, they deliberately planned the murder of both of them.

  And now, we wait. We wait for Armageddon, for that is what it amounts to. There are rumors that the soldiers will enter the town to restore law and order. If it were that, I would welcome them. But everyone knows that Colonel Dudley, too, is fames Dolan's puppet. I shudder to think of what will happen to us, and of what our own natural desire for revenge will lead to if unleashed.

  ***

  MY CONQUEROR, WHO, as he afterwards told me, had been struck with my appearance, kissed me in such a manner that his intent was unmistakable. But even new-born love opposed so sudden a surrender; and the fear of being surprised by my husband was a bar to my compliance. Not for long, however. After being rebuffed, he lay motionless beside me, and the perfection of his manly limbs, even fully clothed—his vermilion lips, pouting and swelling to the touch—his long feminine eyelashes and black curly hair—all conspired to weaken my resolve, despite my natural modesty. I could not help but observe that his condition was such as to require that his trousers be "taken out." And, though not a tailor, or a doting mother, it did fall to me to relieve him of the pressure such a swelling entailed by opening his buttons. And, oh! It emerged with a stiffness! a hardness! an upward bent of erection! and was to all appearances as pretty a piece of woman's meat as ever I should see, and of a size as to feed a convent and a half. In the sequent, he, stretched upon his length, chin on my buttocks (me kneeling bent forward), fumbled with his fingers to unlace my stays, his ungraceful skill such that the stays wouldn't loosen, until with a sudden spring of release my bosom tumbled forward, he in his impatience having sliced all the laces with one sweeping motion of his Green River skinner. With my bosom fully bare, the firm hard swell of a pair of white breasts rose to his cupped hands when they circled my torso, whilst in my nether vessels the flow of sluices commenced...

  ***

  THAT NIGHT AT two A.M. Billy heard sounds. He'd been sleeping in the parlor on the floor beside Tom. It came from the west wing, from Mac and Sue's quarters, and could have been a Dolanite crawling in a window. They'd already tried once to set fire to the house. In granitic dark he threw off the blankets, padded toward the door. No corridors in Macky Sween's house; the rooms simply opened into each other. He crept through the parlor and the sitting room, stepping over and around sleeping Regulators, into Mrs. Shield's bedroom—she snored behind a screen barely visible in darkness. Walking through this house was like walking through a train whose cars had been stopped on a horseshoe bend. Gradually, his eyes adjusted; and his ears devoured noises now loud, now soft, now rhythmic, now knocking. Moaning squealing gag-croaking sounds, splinters of noise, bed ticks softly smashed. He passed through more rooms into the west wing and discerned a bent figure lurking at a doorway and stopped and backpedaled. It was Macky's silhouette. Curled around a doorframe, Billy watched Mac crane toward the lit crack of a barely open door. The sounds came from in there, unmistakable lamentations of pleasure and pain, and the squealing of bedsprings. Mac didn't move a muscle.

  The Kid heard a squeak behind him. At this room's other door he saw Tom O'Folliard, watching him watching Mac. And Macky watching Sue, no doubt, but with whom? And behind Tom, if Billy could have seen her, Minnie Shield watching Tom watching Billy watching Mac watching Sue and her lover.

  ***

  JULY 19. In the morning Billy saw the couch was empty and learned that Fred Waite had racked out sometime during the night. At breakfast, he watched Macky and Sue to see if anything was amiss. Mac seemed content, Sue well-nourished. The doings of night greased the common business of day, it appeared. Once again, they ate in shifts. A boarding-house breakfast: steak, fried eggs, biscuits, gravy, coffee, things had always been nice and foody at Mac's. Then Macky announced to all at the table that he'd written a note to the postmaster in Roswell requesting stamps. All was right with the world! After all, the Kid knew, they outnumbered the Dolanites. And José Chavez y Chavez, Lincoln's new constable, was a member of their party and carried around wherever he went—to breakfast, to bed, to the privy at night—a tall stack of warrants for George Peppin and every member of his posse, for all of the Boys, for James Dolan, too, for the whole lot. Who knows, this could be the day they were arrested. When little Minnie took Mac's note outside to post, Billy moved into the parlor to observe her from the window. Others followed. "What's that dust?" someone said. Then she came back and told Uncle Mac that soldiers were marching through town from the west. Sure enough, there they were, on foot and mounted, raising dust, scaring cats, causing dogs to bark: Colonel Dudley himself with his thick mustache running into burnsides, Captain George Purrington, four other officers, a company of Negro cavalry, and another of white infantry, thirty-five men in all. Behind them, on a wagon, a Gatling gun and a twelve-pound howitzer.

  "What the devil's going on?" Mae asked.

  Sue remarked, "The Congress has prohibited military intervention in civilian affairs. He knows that."

  "Go remind him, why don't you?" Doc Scurlock said.

  "Maybe I will."

  "Who's that?" said the Kid. "That ain't no soldier. See that, Jim?—that's Jesse Evans. With a goddamn cavalry cap."

  "Don't look like Jesse Evans."

  "It sure as shit is."

  All five of Kitty Shield's bedlam children were jumping up and down behind the Regulators grouped around the window, trying to spot the army troops. "Listen," said Jim French to no one in particular. "They can't take sides. I may be crazy but Dudley's not stupid. They'll all of them be court-martialed if they do."

  "Colonel Dudley," said Sue, "is a whiskey barrel in the morning and a barrel of whiskey at night."

  "But he ain't stupid is all I'm saying."

  "He ain't stupid, no," said the Kid. "He can't take sides, sure. But lookit. See what they're doing? He's got the howitzer pointed at JosÉ's."

  It was true. The troops had camped across the road from MontaÑo's little store and had trained the twelve-pounder at its front door. The door opened and someone emerged. He'd thrown a blanket over his head and raced east down the road, out of sight. Within seconds, a dozen others ran out, also h
idden under blankets. Next door, the Patrón house emptied out just as quickly, and those men, too, fled clown the Lincoln-Roswell road. And shots were being fired, not by the soldiers, no, they were nonpartisan, but by Dolanites in the hills, Dolanites to the west. Nothing now prevented them from closing in. "That son of a bitch," Sue McSween hissed. "Do something, Mac."

  McSween in the parlor sat to his desk and, obscurely enraged, wrote a note to Dudley:

  Genl Dudley USA. Would you have the kindness to tell me why soldiers surround my house?

  Before blowing up my property, I would like to know the reason. The constable is here and has warrants for the arrest of Sheriff Peppin and posse for murder and larceny.

  Respectfully, A. A. McSween

  Over Kitty's objections, he gave the note to little Minnie to take outside to Dudley, and Billy watched from the window the brave young girl bouncing up the road to the crusty commander. "If anything happens to her," said her mother, "I'll shoot you myself." Macky's vague and glassy posture and blankness of face created the impression that he simply didn't hear her.

  Ten minutes later, Minnie returned clutching a reply. Her brother Davy attempted to snatch it from her hand. Squeals of the children, shouts of the Regulators, Punch barking next door. And, outside, a contingent of soldiers surrounding Sheriff Peppin as he marched down the road. Shots in the distance. Suddenly, a madness had swept the world, it seemed. Macky read the answer and handed it to Billy:

  A. A. McSween, Sir. I am directed by the Commanding Officer to inform you that no troops have surrounded your house, and that he desires to hold no correspondence with you. He directed me to say that if you desire to blow up your house he has no objection providing you do not injure any of his command by doing so.

  Lt. Millard Goodwin

  Mac looked around the room, at the men, the children, Sue, the parlor organ, a chromo of a country church on the wall. He looked around seemingly searching for something but lacking the foggiest notion of what. He dropped into a Morris chair. From several rooms away came the sound of breaking glass. Macky jumped up, Billy and the others ran toward the sound, in the doorway the Kid warned them to keep clear, stay back. At the front of the house, the window in Mrs. Shield's room had been shattered top to bottom and its barricade of adobes knocked to the floor. "McSween!" someone outside the window shouted.

  "What do you want?"

  "It's Marion Turner. I have warrants for you and the others in the house. Will you surrender?"

  "We have warrants for you." But Macky sounded addled.

  "Who issued your warrants? Let me see them! Come to the window!"

  Jim French suddenly pushed past McSween and fired at the window with his Colt's Army, inching forward as he repeatedly shot. "Here's our warrants!" he bellowed. "You cocksucking sons of bitches." Outside, the fleeing men chopped gravel with their boots.

  Out the window Billy saw that more soldiers in the street mounted on their ponies were escorting more Dolanites riding toward the east. They were after those blanketed men, he thought. McSween nudged him aside. One by one, with care and precision, Mac piled the adobe bricks back in the window. He pushed one in place, tried to pull it back, removed the bricks below it, then fit them in again. Sue said, "Macky, what the hell are you doing?"

  "Fixing this barricade."

  "I'm going out there." She stared at her husband. He opened his mouth but nothing came out, and she bolted from the room.

  Outside, Sue McSween crawled on hands and knees along the half-finished adobe wall beside her house. In the street, she raised up and strutted east with arms swinging. She marched straight clown the road and no one tried to stop her. Colonel Dudley had dismounted and stood in the roadside next to his wagon with the howitzer and Catling gun. They'd set up camp in a weedy empty lot across the road from José Monta~o's store. Soldiers milled about, Lieutenant Goodwin approached. "Halt," he barked, and she stomped through the dirt and dust right past him.

  "I have business with the colonel."

  Colonel Dudley erected. "Mrs. McSween."

  She stared darkly at him—his cratered eyes, hairy ears, anticlinal cheeks. His nose seemed to have gotten a toehold on this face, which was pale as a chalk bluff. Quite a paunch on Dudley, and he made a failure lifting it to the level of his chest when he saw Sue approaching; no shelf to hold it. "My husband and I wish to know what you are doing in town on such a day."

  "I am not aware, madam"—fluttering medals, night-cat glare, the sun overhead so directly above them that no one cast a shadow—"that I have to report my movements to you. However, I'll answer you. People from Lincoln have been coming to the fort for protection for months. I am here to protect women and children and anyone else who requires protection."

  "Protect them from whom?"

  "From belligerents on both sides."

  "Then why do your soldiers escort the belligerents from only one side?"

  "If your husband wishes it, we'll escort him, too."

  "Escort him to jail!"

  "Do you expect my protection? When you allow such men as Kid Antrim, Jim French, and others of like character to be in your house? I will send my soldiers where I please."

  "Why is your cannon pointed at my house?"

  "If you will look more closely you will perceive—do you see?—that it is pointed precisely in the opposite direction."

  "I have been told you will blow up my house."

  "You have been misinformed. I have a letter right here sent to me by your husband stating that he intends to blow his house up himself."

  "My husband would never write such a letter!"

  Above them, the leaves of cottonwoods and walnuts stirred sluggishly in a breeze that did not relieve the heat. They lightly showered dust back on the road that the soldiers had raised an hour or so before. Gunshots came from Sue's house. She turned and tried to peer around the buzzing soldiers who had managed to surround her. "Mrs. McSween," harrumphed the colonel. He pulled Macky's note from the pocket of his coat and read it aloud.

  Sue turned back to him. "I don't believe my husband wrote that."

  The colonel held it up, that she might scrutinize the scratches. It surely was Mac's notepaper: Law Office of McSween and Shield across the top. But when Sue reached out he snatched it away. "Ah, Mrs. McSween. You must think me a nincompoop." Bloating his eyes, he turned to Sergeant Baker standing beside them. "If this woman attempts to take this letter from my hand, you are to shoot her." And he continued to flaunt it like a boy playing keep-away.

  More gunshots. Sue swung around again to look at her house. With her back to the colonel she barked, "Then you won't help us?"

  "If your husband will surrender to me, I give you my word of honor, as an officer of the army, that he will not be molested or in any way hurt."

  She turned to face Dudley, wild-eyed and haggish—her freshness rubbed off—raising her voice, on the verge of tears. "Everything you say sounds pretty thin to me."

  "Excuse me. I don't comprehend what you said."

  "I said it looks a little too thin."

  "I don't understand such slang, Mrs. McSween. The ladies I associate with do not use such language. I don't know what you mean by the phrase 'too thin.'"

  "I mean despite your blubber I can see right through you."

  ***

  THAT EVENING, Mac and Sue sat in the parlor. From the bowels of the house came sounds of a commotion. "What's that smell?" asked Sue but Mac didn't answer. He didn't wish to answer, it was his privilege. A few hours ago, Jack Long and the Dummy had snuck up on the house and set the kitchen door on fire but Kitty and her daughter had doused it with water. Macky's men in Tunstall's store had spotted the arsonists, who'd fled to the privy under their gunfire, and they continued to shoot, shredding the boards. For all anyone knew Dolan's two thugs were still in there now, either dead as four o'clock or huddled down inside the pit. "I smell smoke again, Mac!" Sue had jumped up and now crossed the floor sniffing. When she fled toward the back of the house Macky f
ollowed.

  Through the east wing, through the Shields' quarters, through their own wing, all the way to the storehouse were Billy and the others bunched up like cattle at the rear door. "They tried another fire," said the Kid. "Run off our horses, pulled boards from the stable, and set this room ablaze from the shed but we're putting it out." A fusillade of gunshots came from outside. Jim French, Yginio Salazar, Florencio Chavez, and Ignacio Gonzales burst through the door, smoke and bullets trailing them. All coughed and backed away. "They're in the stable," said Jim, blinking as he spoke. "The flames is straight in their line of fire."

  "But you extinguished them?"

  "We couldn't."

  Soon, the fire grew. Mac had always assumed that adobe didn't burn, and, of course, it did not. Could dirt itself burn? But the beams and framework could, the vigas, the floor, the furniture inside. And once it got started, as he now learned, you couldn't get at it, it burned in the marrows and was impossible to stop. Like a slow fever, it grew and spread methodically; it transformed the very house into an oven. Plus, the smoldering fumes and smoke and oily residue seeped torturously through every crack and seam, down from the ceiling, up from the floor. Backing off, they shut the door to the burning storeroom and Billy and Yginio pushed a dresser against it.

  They'd been, by now, in this house for five days. More than one hundred hours. Their usual malodorous bodies and clothes had ripened like fruit to a state beyond rot. To Mac, who had always sought explanations for his trials, nothing made sense, except he was embedded, nailed into the moment, then the next one, then the next. He was in a familiar place, in the middle. Do not speak of existence when it comes to Macky's bearings, speak of the mess. The clutter, the noise, the bullets all the time snapping into the house—this was all to be expected. The firing now relentless. Punch barking. Please feed him. Macky realized that their entire entourage had wound up in Sue's sitting room, and below him, on a table, her sketchbook was open to a pen-and-ink drawing of Lincoln's Torreon spread across two pages. The Torreon was not a symbol for anything, save artful intention. Nor were the flowers on the piano, the framed photos of houses Mac had never seen, of boys and girls he'd never met. Was one of them Sue? And gimcracks and knickknacks and little carved figures and waxed apples and pears, a herbarium, old brocade on the stuffed chairs. Sue had even bought a prie-dieu for this room, dear pious Sue. The flowers had never wilted here, had they? The wickedness of the world even rewrote nature. Macky noticed a place low on the wall just above the floor where the adobes appeared to have decomposed, and he thought, I must speak to Romolo. More jaspe perhaps. And the bowl going round. No, it couldn't be. Not now, not here. McSween took a seat and propped his head in his hands. Faults in his mind shifted, blocks of thought fractured; it was almost a relief. The fragments were such that he could occupy one, whatever its contents, as long as he pleased. Parties knowing themselves indebted to the Lantier estate are requested to call at my office and settle. Produce of every kind taken as payment. Delinquents will be forced. Request aid of the sheriff while the bowl goes round.