Doc - Mary Doria Russell [186]
Morgan left Alex in Doc’s room. The weather was still pretty nice, and Morg went outside to sit on the front porch so they could talk without him hearing. Things stayed quiet for a while, but the conversation got louder and more lively. Finally Morg decided he’d best go back in and settle the two of them down.
By that time, the priest was laughing so hard he was almost crying, though Doc was only smiling, propped up on a pile of pillows and lying under a heap of quilts that Mabel Riney brought over when she first heard that he was sick.
“Why, hello, Morgan!” Doc said, sounding mildly surprised to see him, like they hadn’t spent damn near every day of the last six weeks together. “Father von Angensperg and I were just discussin’ the vagaries of translation from Greek and Latin to English.”
“We were speaking of Handel’s Messiah,” Alex told Morg.
“Which I heard for the first time when I was ten—” Doc said.
“—and the text was He gave his back to smiters, but Doc heard the choir wrong—”
“And I spent a very long afternoon wonderin’, Now why would Jesus give his hat to spiders …?”
Alex busted up laughing again. Then Morgan asked how a handle could have a messiah and the priest laughed even harder, but Doc explained about how the Messiah was music, and a man named Handel wrote it. Morgan told the two of them to behave themselves and not let Doc get overtired.
About half an hour later, Wyatt arrived for the afternoon shift just as Alex came back out into the front room, pulling the door closed behind him. “He’s sleeping,” Alex reported. “Hello, Wyatt. Good to see you again.”
For a time they all spoke quietly about how ill Doc had been, how near to death.
“I hope you know how much he appreciates your care,” Alex told the Earps.
“For I was sick, and you came to me,” Wyatt said.
“Nah,” Morgan said. “It was selfishness.”
Wyatt and Alex were both surprised, but Morgan just shrugged.
“Doc doesn’t have any brothers,” he told Alex. “So we took him for our own.”
November ended. Doc continued to make gains. Explanations varied.
Perhaps it was the prayers of Indian children that saved him.
Perhaps it was simply rest and care. And Jau Dong-Sing’s noodles.
Most likely James Earp came closest to the truth.
“That’s why it took us four damn years to beat them rebs,” he said. “Skinny, inbred sonsabitches are tougher than they look.”
Whatever the reason for his survival, by early December John Henry Holliday was laying plans to defy his doctor’s orders to stay home and stay quiet. Two months cooped up in a little rented house were all that he could bear. He craved bright lights and noise, more company and livelier conversation. He became determined to celebrate the eve of his twenty-seventh Christmas by escorting Kate to a party that Bat Masterson was throwing at the Lone Star Dance Hall that night.
And nobody could talk him out of it.
Wilfred Eberhardt was paid a dime to shine the dentist’s boots to a fine black gleam. Jau Dong-Sing was called upon to take in the seams of Doc’s best suit. A note was sent to Wright’s General Outfitting Store, ordering a burgundy cravat and a silk shirt in pale pink, to set off the newly fitted frock coat of fine dove gray wool.
Doc wanted Kate to order a gown for the party as well, but they were still living off the two grand she’d won from Eli Grier. With no money coming in, Kate was concerned about expenses. She insisted that her blue silk would do for Bat’s party, but Doc would not take no for her answer and wore her to a nubbin on the topic.
On the evening of the twenty-fourth, she made him wait in the front room while she took her time getting dressed. When she emerged, she was glowing like a bride in