Doc - Mary Doria Russell [92]
On the whole, however, things might have turned out better if James Earp hadn’t intervened in something that was none of his affair. He meant no harm, of course. Helpful people never do. James and Bessie were happy; it was natural for him to think that Doc and Kate could be happy, too.
This much is sure. If Kate hadn’t gone back to Doc Holliday on the afternoon of June 10, 1878, you never would have heard of him. You wouldn’t know the names of Wyatt Earp or any of his brothers. The Clantons and McLaurys would be utterly forgotten, and Tombstone would be nothing more than an Arizona ghost town with an ironic name.
Too late now.
Unaware of the road he did not take, John Henry Holliday had instead returned to his hotel room after office hours that day, undressed to his linen, piled up a few pillows, and lay down, moving carefully so as not to upset his chest. Not quite ready for sleep, he leafed through a new dental supply catalog and was pleased to note that the barber chair he’d bought was far less expensive than the new Morrison Dentist’s Model with the reclining mechanism. Turning the page, he saw an advertisement for a motor-driven dental drill that his cousin Robert had recently recommended and was startled by its price.
Bless his heart, he thought. Robert must be doing well.
John Henry himself was still using a foot-pedal model, but it occurred to him then that if he hired little Wilfred Eberhardt to work the drive, it would provide the boy with a small income and save his own energy for the skilled labor.
He laid the catalog aside and, for a time, simply appreciated the quiet in his room. He was alone but not lonely. Kate’s absence was a relief, he decided, not a deprivation. He was, he believed, no longer prone to the paralyzing bouts of homesickness that used to overwhelm him, when the yearning for all he had lost was so powerful that his only defense was to hold himself still until the sorrow washed through him and left him empty again.
The heat was building under the roof of the hotel, but the air was dry and not so hard on him as the murderous swelter of a Southern summer. He closed his eyes and listened to the strangely lulling concert that Dodge in daylight produced. The brassy bellow of cattle, the timpani of hooves. A cello section of bees buzzing in the hotel eaves. The steady percussion of hammers: carpenters shingling the roof of a little house going up on a brand-new street extending north from Front.
Tap tap tap BANG! Tap tap tap BANG …
… The rolling thunder of artillery, the pop and crackle of small-arms fire. Wilson’s voice: “A’lanna’s burnin’, Mr. John! They’re in Jonesboro—” And Chainey’s: “They’ll come here next, Mr. John!” But Mamma is too sick to move, and he has to stand them off, and he can hear the harsh Yankee voices, the crude, vile language—how can they speak so with ladies near? He is firing and firing—all by himself now. Who’ll load the guns if Wilson and Chainey have run off? There’s no one else to save her, and the bullets are gone. “Use a rock, son,” Robert yells, but there aren’t any rocks and—
“Ce n’est qu’un rêve. Je suis ici, mon amour. It’s only a dream. Wake up, Doc. Je suis ici. Je ne vais pas te quitter.”
Kate was there, her arm over him, her small, soft, living body stretched along his back, her voice low and sure.
“It’s just that goddam dream again. Wake up, Doc. Wake up.”
She was glad she’d arrived at their hotel room in time, pleased to help him as he fought his way out of the nightmare, happy to cradle him during those first awful moments when eviscerating grief seemed briefly fresh.
“It’s over now,” she told him again and again. “I’m here, Doc. I won’t leave you.”
She had forgotten by then that she had not left him, that she had been thrown out. She had no memory of being told not to come back. She knew how to calm him after the dream, how to steady him while he coughed until his throat was raw and his chest burned. She knew how much bourbon was enough to help him catch his breath, and she knew how to make him forget, for a time, his mother