by Pete Dexter
He was still moving on the floor and had glimpses of Handsome Dick trying to draw a bead on his head. Vanity kept the singer from spraying bullets all over the floor. Handsome Dick was a shootist and hated to miss. Charley rolled under the bed and stopped. He took one of the guns out of its holster and cocked it. Above him, the mattress sagged, and he thought of the China Doll's bottom, almost as close to him now as before Handsome Dick came in the door.
Charley's head was swimming, much the same way that Charley himself swam, and he was out of breath. He found Handsome Dick's legs, though, and drew a bead of his own. "You want to call this off?" Charley said. He did not like to shoot a man in the leg unwarned. He waited but Handsome Dick did not answer. "You want to call it off?" he said again. Then the China Doll moved on the mattress, and it sagged between Charley's gun and his eyes, cutting off his view.
Handsome Dick said, "What?" and Charley shot him in the shin.
Handsome dropped to the floor and Charley rolled out from under the bed. For a long, uncomfortable minute they were eyeball to eyeball.
"You crippled me," Handsome said. He held on to the front of his leg, a little above the shoe. He had broken out sweating, and he spoke without opening his teeth.
Charley got to his feet and then sat on the bed over him, looking down. He was still holding his own gun in his hand, and the swimming in his head had changed at the sound of the explosion, and he felt more like he was floating now. The China Doll sat as still as the moon in the sky.
Charley looked from one of them to the other, and then at the gun in his hand. "I never shot a human being in my life," he said.
"You did now," Handsome said.
Charley saw he was afraid. "Move your hand and I'll have a look."
Handsome Dick let go of his shin, and Charley lifted his pants leg up over the wound. The shot had gone in dead center and exited the back. The bone had splintered, and there was a little piece of it caught in the torn skin under the calf. "How bad is it?" Handsome said.
"I don't understand it," Charley said. "I never shot a soul in my life, never had to."
"Am I crippled?"
Charley shook his head. "I don't know," he said. Handsome Dick covered his eyes and his face sparkled with sweat. "I don't feel anything," he said, "but I'm cold."
Charley turned back to the China Doll. "I never even pointed a gun at anybody," he said. She did not move. On the floor, Handsome Dick began to moan.
"I'll get a doctor," Charley said, but he didn't go. He wanted somebody to understand that he'd shot a human being.
Handsome Dick hissed. "Not here," he said. "I can't be caught with a China whore."
Charley looked at her again, but she hadn't understood. He thought of Bill, and then of the farmer at the Langrishe Theater. He wondered what they would say about this in the bars.
Charley said, "I could remove you back to a white whore and bring you a doctor there."
Handsome Dick was pale and he began to shake. "I'm freezing," he said. And Charley picked him up from behind and got his head under one of Handsome's arms for support. "This is fair and square of you," Handsome said, "but no more than I'd do for a Christian myself."
"I saw what you did for Christianity earlier tonight," Charley said.
Handsome Dick leaned on Charley and they walked out the door. As Charley left, he turned to the China Doll and bowed about four inches, which was as far off center as he could get without falling over. "I will return directly," he said.
At the stairs Handsome tried to hop, which caused him true pain. It came higher in the leg than Charley had shot him, and it stopped him where he stood. He choked Charley until it had passed.
"Hell," Charley said when Handsome had relaxed his hold on his windpipe, "I've got to carry you, don't I?"
Handsome did not seem to be paying attention. When Charley looked into his face, his eyes were unfocused and shiny. Charley moved out from under Handsome's arm and stood on the step in front of him.
The singer draped both arms over Charley's shoulders and brought them together under his chin. Then he moved his weight off his feet and onto Charley's back. Charley took Handsome's knees in his arms and carried him down the stairs. The theater had closed, and except for two celestials cleaning glasses off the tables, it was empty. Charley wondered if they had thought the shots were just miners, upstairs celebrating with the Chinese whores. They took no notice of white men carrying each other piggyback out the door.
When they were in the street, Charley tried to put Handsome Dick down, but the singer would not have it. "You'll aggravate the injury," he said, and held on to Charley's neck. And so Charley carried him out of Chinatown and back to the Gem Theater. His feet went to the bottom of the mud—he presumed there was a bottom to the mud—and it reminded him of carrying the governor of Colorado, who weighed three hundred pounds, through the snow. Anything you carried through the mud weighed three hundred pounds.
Charley had killed most of his bottle, and talked more than he normally would, repeating himself on the matter of having shot a human being.
Handsome moaned and held on. "Don't leave me alone," he said.
"If I was going to leave you someplace," Charley said, "would I be carrying your ass all over town in the mud to do it? When I leave something, I leave it." And Handsome moaned again, until Charley almost felt sorry for him.
There were still customers at the Gem, so Charley carried Handsome Dick around to the back. There was another set of stairs there which led to the opposite end of the hallway. Al Swearingen had instinctively known that a whorehouse was more comfortable with two ways out. The back stairs were narrower than the ones in front, and dark, and the wood bent and complained under the weight of Charley and his load. They complained, Handsome Dick complained.
"It hurts worse now," he said. "It comes in pulses."
"Yes, it does," Charley said. He was breathing hard, and there didn't seem to be air to talk with.
"Am I going to die?"
Charley saw the red-headed farmer lying across the stake in front of him while Handsome Dick put four shots into his chest. "Maybe," he said.
He took the singer to Lurline's door and eased him to the floor to open it. Handsome cried out at the change of positions and broke into a fresh sweat. "We'll put you in a chair," Charley said, "and tell it was Lurline instead of the Chinese. Lurline keeps a secret."
He opened the door to her room then, quietly, and found her lying in bed under Boone May. Charley recognized the head by its size even before it turned and stared at him and the ceiling at the same time. Boone May looked, and then Lurline looked.
Charley stood still, Handsome Dick moaned.
It was Charley and the whiskey that spoke first. "Outward appearance," he said, "you're beginning to look easy, Lurline."
Boone looked from Charley to Lurline. "Have you took up with this pretty?" he said.
"He ain't a pretty," she said. "He's intelligent."
"Thank you," Charley said.
"What's he doing now?" Boone said to her.
"I don't know," she said.
"Well," Boone said to Lurline, "he'd best do it someplace else. It's situations like this people get shot."
Handsome Dick moaned and fell into a chair. "What's wrong with him?" Boone said to Lurline. He still hadn't spoken to Charley.
"I don't know," she said.
Charley said, "Shooting is an unpopular subject right now," and Handsome grabbed his leg and began to rock back and forth.
"It's bad again," he said.
"What did you do to him?" Lurline said. She sat all the way up, disentangling herself from Boone May, and stared at Charley like Handsome was a blood relative.
Charley looked at the ceiling, wondering if, because of his eye, Boone May might not know more about ceilings than anybody alive. "It has been a star-crossed day for me and this singer," he said.
"Did you shoot him?" she said. Charley scratched his neck, thinking of a way to explain it. "You did,
didn't you?" And she came out of bed naked to look at Handsome's leg.
"It happened in Chinatown," Charley said.
Boone sat up and began dressing himself under the covers. Seeing he was suddenly polite, Charley realized Boone might have to be shot too, after he was decent.
"I can smell it on you," she said. "Nobody has to tell me they been in Chinatown. The whole goddamn place smells like a buffalo robe."
"Well, that's where it happened, but on account of his career, Handsome had me bring him here before I got him a doctor. Seeing how this is where it started anyway."
"What was the two of you doing in Chinatown?" she said.
"It wasn't me," Handsome said. "I just followed him there to get even." Lurline stared at Charley until he felt like it was himself without clothes.
"You used to be clean," she said. "Next thing I know, you got your peeder in some slant-eyes washee."
Charley nodded at the bed, where Boone was still trying to get his feet into the right sleeves of his long underwear. "Are you lecturing to me on cleanliness? The last time he got wet, he pissed himself in the night."
Boone did not seem to hear that, which Charley, on reflection, saw was just as well. Boone May was nobody to insult when you'd spent yourself carrying a shot singer out of Chinatown. Lurline said, "You ain't going to leave him here."
Handsome moaned. "It's horrible," he said, meaning his leg.
"This is where I found him," Charley said. "And this is where I brought him back. Now I got to go get him a doctor to give him some morphine before he dies on us."
Lurline looked at him a long minute. "I liked him better before you shot him," she said to Charley. "He don't act like he's famous now."
Boone had gotten into his underwear and buttoned it up the front. He stood up by the bed now, barefoot, taking up half the room. "There ain't nobody famous," he said to her, stepping into his pants. "Not the way you think of it."
"The hell there ain't," she said.
Boone looked at Charley. "Tell her, pretty. About famous. They die like anybody else."
Charley thought it over. "There's some die better than others," he said.
Handsome began to cry. "Some die quieter too," Boone said.
"Get me a sawbones," Handsome said, and then he fainted.
Lurline stared at Charley. "There," she said, "see what you done? You killed him."
It was three o'clock in the morning when Charley got Dr. O. E. Sick out of bed. He hated to wake him at that hour, because the man had been kind to the Bottle Fiend, but for that same reason Charley tried him instead of one of the others. It was not a world that rewarded the kind.
Dr. O. E. Sick was old, and he took the story Charley told him and centered it again and again in his head, as if he were balancing it in there. "The man was shot in the lower left leg," he said on the way over, "and he is unconscious?"
"He was when I left," Charley said.
"And it was just the leg. You're sure . . ."
"I was there."
Dr. O. E. Sick had tucked his nightshirt into his pants and tucked his pants into his boots. Anything that spilled down his neck would end up on his feet. "Everyone's a shootist," he said. "Bang, bang."
Charley stopped in the mud. "In my life, I never shot a human being before, or wanted to," he said, "but it was a Christian thing, under the circumstances, not putting one in his head."
"Christianity," the doctor said.
They walked quietly a few yards, the doctor balancing his thoughts. "Could he be dead?" he said after a while.
"No."
They walked farther into the badlands. "I wouldn't like it if he was dead," the doctor said.
"I wouldn't like it either," Charley said. "That's why I came and got you."
The doctor did not seem to hear. "They come and got me early this morning for Preacher Smith," he said. "Woke me up at daybreak to ride three miles to view the Indians' work. He was shot forty times if he was shot once. I said, 'What is it you think a doctor does, fill holes?' It was more holes there than preacher."
It took Charley a few seconds to remember Preacher Smith, standing out on his packing crate on Main Street, asking the Lord for protection, while Charley sat in that stale wagon, worrying over the boy.
Charley wondered how it happened that men of the cloth always seemed to misunderstand the ways of the Lord. If you wanted protection you had to ask for money or love, and He would give you protection instead. Prayer was a study in misdirection, but none of the Methodists Charley ever met paid enough attention to notice, and spent their lives praying the wrong way.
"The boys on the killing site thought it was a fine thing the Indians didn't mutilate the preacher," the doctor said. He shook his head and pushed through the mud. "You'll be hearing that for a while now," he said. '"At least they didn't mutilate him.'"
"Well," Charley said, "that's something."
The doctor stared at him. "I hope this man isn't dead," he said. "I'm too old to be getting out of bed to view corpses. I seen enough now, I can wait until business hours to look at the next one."
"He was speaking right up until the moment he passed out," Charley said, getting worried now.
"Coherent?" the doctor said.
"Hell yes, he can hear," Charley said. "I didn't shoot him in the ears."
And they looked at each other—the two smartest men awake in the Black Hills—each of them wondering what he had stumbled across now. The doctor had a theory soft-brain was caused by the climate, and before they got to the Gem he said, "You was caught out in the April blizzard this year, wasn't you?"
Handsome Banjo Dick Brown had regained consciousness and was lying on Lurline's bed. He was soaked through with sweat, and the expression on his face reminded Charley of the first times he had been hurt himself. Pain was its own teacher, and there wasn't any way to learn how it worked but to be visited. If the visits weren't right on top of each other—if they were far enough apart so you could forget the way it came but close enough to remember it went away—you could learn to ride it out.
Handsome Dick moaned, deep and helpless. His lips were pitiful. When he saw Dr. O. E. Sick he began to cry. The doctor sat down on the bed with him and put his hand on Handsome's forehead. "I never felt nothing like this," Handsome said. "I didn't know nothing like this existed."
The doctor lifted Handsome Dick's eyelids, one after the other, and then he pressed the nails of his fingers to see if the blood would come back after he let go. Then he moved down the bed and looked at the leg. Handsome's pants leg was pushed up over his knee as high as it would go, and Dr. Sick reached into his bag and came out with a knife.
Handsome closed his eyes and sobbed. Dr. Sick paid no attention. He cut the pants leg, bottom to top. Handsome Dick opened his eyes. "That feels better," he said, blinking tears. "You're a wizard."
The doctor paid no attention. He poked the skin around the entrance wound to see if the blood would return when he stopped. Then he rolled Handsome Dick over and looked at the other side. It was swollen now, and blue, and the blood had caked black in the opening. The swelling was such that you could not see the splinter of bone. "The bone's broke bad," the doctor said.
Handsome Dick moaned. "I ain't going to lose the leg . . ."
Charley was reminded in some distant way of Captain Jack Crawford. The doctor shook his head. "We got to clean out the wound," he said. "Remove bone fragments and splint you up."
Handsome Dick nodded at all that, and the doctor reached into his bag for the needle. He gave Handsome a shot of morphine, pushing it in at the vein in back of his knee. Charley watched, and in one minute Handsome's face uncontorted itself. Then a sly look came into his eyes. A moment later he winked at Lurline, who had been sitting by the window, looking like she could use a shot of painkiller too.
"Don't smile at me, either of you," she said. Boone had left mad. "I been disillusioned."
"I shall suck thy breasts," Handsome said.
Handsome's eyes closed
around his thoughts. He was smiling now. "Pay him no attention," the doctor said to Lurline. "He don't know what he's saying now."
"Well," she said, "if he ain't responsible, I don't guess I can blame him."
The doctor looked through his bag and found a tin of black powder. He loaded some onto the blade of the knife and sifted it into the wounds, front and back. Handsome Dick opened his eyes and watched.
"Is that medicine?" Handsome said.
The doctor paid no attention. He went over the wounds twice, making sure each of them was covered with powder. When he had finished, he told Lurline to wet a towel. There was a pitcher of water in the corner, and she dipped a towel into it and then wrung it out.
"You hold him over there," he said to her, "and you hold him there." He pointed Charley to the far side of the bed. Charley did what he was told, but it brought him into it farther than he wanted to be. What he wanted was to leave the doctor with Handsome Dick and find his way back over to Chinatown. He put his hands on Handsome Dick's narrow shoulders, realizing the singer had never done a day's work in his life. He pictured how Handsome would have looked to the farmer he killed, whose whole life was work.
The doctor bent Handsome's knee until there was six inches between the wound and the bed. "What is that medicine?" Handsome asked. "Am I cured?" Then he rolled his eyes until they settled on Lurline, who was holding the other shoulder. "I shall taste thy loveliness," he said.
Lurline smiled at him and then looked at Charley. "You can't blame him for honest passions," she said. "He ain't responsible."
Dr. O. E. Sick found a match in his pants pocket and lit it against the bedpost. Handsome Dick moved his gaze from Lurline's loveliness toward the sound of the strike. He was late, though. By the time Handsome focused on what the doctor was doing, the match was already in the powder. There was a small sound when it lit, like somebody blowing out a candle, and then his leg was smoking.
The doctor had done the leg, front and back, before it hit Handsome's sensibilities. When it did, he screamed and bucked and buckled, but there wasn't a muscle in his body, and they held on to him. Dr. Sick waited five seconds and then wrapped the smoking part of Handsome's leg in the towel. It did not seem to stop the pain, and every time Handsome yelped there was surprise in it.
