Doc - Mary Doria Russell [65]
“Country,” Morg said quietly. “See? There’s a r.”
“Country,” Wyatt said. “Office at Room No. 24, Dodge House. Where—” He pointed to another word.
“Satisfaction.”
“Where satisfaction is not given, money will be re … refunded.” Wyatt looked up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wyatt had a good memory and he wasn’t stupid by any stretch, but he had a hell of a time reading. The words never seemed to add up for him.
“It means,” Morg told him, “Doc knows he’s so damn good, you won’t mind paying. You should go see him,” Morgan urged then, because what had happened to Wyatt was Morg’s fault, really, and he still felt bad about it, all these years later. “Doc fixed a tooth for me a few weeks back. Didn’t feel a thing!”
“Gone is gone, Morg. Some things can’t be fixed.”
“Just ask, is all I’m saying.”
“Maybe.” Wyatt stood and dropped fifteen cents on the table. “Wake up John Stauber and Jack Brown and Chuck Trask,” he told Morg. “I want everybody on tonight. Bat and Charlie, too. Meet me at Dog’s in half an hour.”
It is human nature to notice differences. Mothers are only human, so it’s not unusual for one child among many to be a mother’s favorite. Commonly a woman will favor her youngest: the babe in arms who reminds her of the others when they were small and milky sweet and sleepy, before they walked and talked, and made noise and trouble. On the other hand, the oldest is often appreciated for being a sort of vice-parent, providing companionship and practical help in raising the younger children.
Wyatt and Morgan were middle kids, the fourth and fifth of six sons and not special like Martha and Adelia were, just for being girls. Ordinarily, those two boys would have been lost in the shuffle, unnoticed amid the growing tribe of Earps crammed into a series of small houses or an even smaller Conestoga wagon. And yet, Wyatt and Morg were especially dear to their mother.
Virginia Cooksey was the second of Nicholas Earp’s two wives and stepmother to Newton, his oldest boy. The family moved a lot and often settled far from any school, so Virginia herself taught all the kids to reckon and to read. Most of the children were competent, if impatient, at their lessons, but poor Wyatt struggled from the alphabet on up, though he was good at sums. Morgan—four years younger—took to books like a foal to running. That was what distinguished those two boys from the others in Virginia’s heart. Wyatt’s earnest, frowning effort. Morgan’s pure joy in reading.
Even when he was little and just listened, Morg loved the feel of a book in his hands, loved the pictures books drew inside his head, loved even the smell of paper, and leather binding, and glue. Lord, but it did Virginia’s heart good to watch that child with a book, his solid little body almost motionless while his mind traveled. And she admired the way Morgan helped Wyatt with his lessons instead of making fun of him, like the older boys did.
Morg was as unruly and active as any of his brothers, but from the start he had a sunnier and more tolerant nature. Morgan was able to get along with folks, able to imagine that somebody else might have a different notion of things without that person being wicked or wrong. Morg wasn’t slack or morally adrift, but he wasn’t so rigid and hard-minded as the family Virginia had married into.
Bless his heart, Virginia always thought, Morgan is a Cooksey.
Morgan loved stories, and Virginia herself saw no harm in reading them, but her husband was dead set against the practice. Nicholas approved of reading so long as it was confined to the Bible and the newspaper; stories he considered not just a waste of time but close to sinful, for they were make-believe and akin to lies. In Virginia’s opinion, stories were simple amusements at worst and windows into other lives at best. The way people talked in stories was a source of freshness and novelty after a stale day of listening to the boys’ squabbling, the girls’ complaints, and her husband’s stream of demands, instructions, and orders. Reading about people in stories was like having visitors.