Doc - Mary Doria Russell [174]
“The disease is active again,” he said finally. “It is gnawing on my left lung, as a rat gnaws on cheese. Except: a rat sleeps. This never, ever lets up. Every goddam breath I take hurts, Morg. I need that much liquor so I can quit cryin’ and leave my bed because—” he turned away and coughed, again and again, shredding adhesions, his chest aching with the effort to keep on pulling in air—“because like every other damned soul in this godforsaken hell, I still have to make a livin’.”
His voice broke and he looked away, blinking, and for a terrible moment, Morgan thought that Doc might weep.
“I was buildin’ a practice,” the dentist whispered. “People were bringin’ their children to me … I had to turn away three utterly wretched patients this week! Who will care for them now? This mornin’ I had a denture like Wyatt’s nearly finished for Mabel Riney. I coughed while I was adjustin’ the mount. Broke it in half. Hours of work shot to hell, and nothin’ to give that poor woman but her twenty-three dollars back. That’ll just about clean me out. I can’t make the month’s rent on the office! I will have to give it up …”
“Where’s Kate?” Morg asked softly. “She usually finds you better games—”
“She left,” Doc snapped. “This morning. She found out that I am broke, and then she found greener pastures. Of course, one can hardly complain when a whore goes where the money is.”
“But, Doc, all the money you paid for Roxana went to Kate!”
“I swear, Morgan: you tell her that, and I’ll—”
Threat dying on his lips, Doc closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and sat trembling, left hand holding the sodden handkerchief, the right pressing hard against his chest for what felt like forever.
When at last he spoke again, it was with a bitter, quiet, hard-won precision. “When I am like this, dentistry is beyond me. So I play cards. I play cards with the most ignorant, fatuous, misbegotten clay eaters the benighted state of Texas has to offer. I cannot do that sober, Morgan! I have tried. The task is more than I can—”
Suddenly he was on his feet, winging his glass at the piano where the cowboy was trying to pick out “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and kept getting a note wrong.
“A-flat!” Doc shouted. “It’s A-flat!”
“A flat what?” the cowboy shouted back.
“God as my witness,” Doc swore, pointing at the piano, “I shall be driven to slaughter—”
The coughing hit again. Morgan said, “C’mon, Doc. Sit down. I’m sorry. Look, I have some money saved up, and—”
“I don’t need charity! All I need is to be left alone to earn my way as best I can! And now I must go buck the tiger—which is a fool’s errand—because you just busted up a poker game that I was winnin’, God damn you, and this time of night, faro is the only game in town that will be open to me. In future, I will take it as a personal favor if you would kindly refrain from interferin’ in my affairs. Good evenin’ to you, sir.”
Everyone in the place watched as he left.
For a long time, Morgan sat openmouthed, trying to think of some way to help. Nothing came to mind.
The bartender brought a whisk broom and dustpan over to the piano, and knelt to sweep up the broken glass.
Shoulda seen it coming. That’s what Wyatt thought, though he heard it in his father’s voice. Walked right into it, you stupid pile of shit.
Seven of them, waiting for him in the saloon. Bartender, gone. Off in the corner, just one man playing faro. Nobody else in the place.
He’d been warned. Twice. Dog first, then Bat. So Wyatt had started wearing a sidearm pretty regularly, and went as far as loading heavy-gauge into the shotguns behind the bars in every saloon in town. But the weeks passed. Nobody else came at him and … He let his guard down. He got sloppy. His shift was almost over, and he was distracted.
They had his gun before he took two steps past the door.
He’d been thinking about Mattie Blaylock, confused because it didn’t start out so complicated between them. Mattie did her job and Wyatt did his, but somewhere along the line, he went off the tracks, and he