Lucky Billy (24 page)

"I am not aware, madam"—fluttering medals, night-cat glare, the sun overhead so directly above them that no one cast a shadow—"that I have to report my movements to you. However, I'll answer you. People from Lincoln have been coming to the fort for protection for months. I am here to protect women and children and anyone else who requires protection."

"Protect them from whom?"

"From belligerents on both sides."

"Then why do your soldiers escort the belligerents from only one side?"

"If your husband wishes it, we'll escort him, too."

"Escort him to jail!"

"Do you expect my protection? When you allow such men as Kid Antrim, Jim French, and others of like character to be in your house? I will send my soldiers where I please."

"Why is your cannon pointed at my house?"

"If you will look more closely you will perceive—do you see?—that it is pointed precisely in the opposite direction."

"I have been told you will blow up my house."

"You have been misinformed. I have a letter right here sent to me by your husband stating that he intends to blow his house up himself."

"My husband would never write such a letter!"

Above them, the leaves of cottonwoods and walnuts stirred sluggishly in a breeze that did not relieve the heat. They lightly showered dust back on the road that the soldiers had raised an hour or so before. Gunshots came from Sue's house. She turned and tried to peer around the buzzing soldiers who had managed to surround her. "Mrs. McSween," harrumphed the colonel. He pulled Macky's note from the pocket of his coat and read it aloud.

Sue turned back to him. "I don't believe my husband wrote that."

The colonel held it up, that she might scrutinize the scratches. It surely was Mac's notepaper:
Law Office of McSween and Shield
across the top. But when Sue reached out he snatched it away. "Ah, Mrs. McSween. You must think me a nincompoop." Bloating his eyes, he turned to Sergeant Baker standing beside them. "If this woman attempts to take this letter from my hand, you are to shoot her." And he continued to flaunt it like a boy playing keep-away.

More gunshots. Sue swung around again to look at her house. With her back to the colonel she barked, "Then you won't help us?"

"If your husband will surrender to me, I give you my word of honor, as an officer of the army, that he will not be molested or in any way hurt."

She turned to face Dudley, wild-eyed and haggish—her freshness rubbed off—raising her voice, on the verge of tears. "Everything you say sounds pretty thin to me."

"Excuse me. I don't comprehend what you said."

"I said it looks a little too thin."

"I don't understand such slang, Mrs. McSween. The ladies I associate with do not use such language. I don't know what you mean by the phrase 'too thin.'"

"I mean despite your blubber I can see right through you."

***

THAT EVENING
, Mac and Sue sat in the parlor. From the bowels of the house came sounds of a commotion. "What's that smell?" asked Sue but Mac didn't answer. He didn't wish to answer, it was his privilege. A few hours ago, Jack Long and the Dummy had snuck up on the house and set the kitchen door on fire but Kitty and her daughter had doused it with water. Macky's men in Tunstall's store had spotted the arsonists, who'd fled to the privy under their gunfire, and they continued to shoot, shredding the boards. For all anyone knew Dolan's two thugs were still in there now, either dead as four o'clock or huddled down inside the pit. "I smell smoke again, Mac!" Sue had jumped up and now crossed the floor sniffing. When she fled toward the back of the house Macky followed.

Through the east wing, through the Shields' quarters, through their own wing, all the way to the storehouse were Billy and the others bunched up like cattle at the rear door. "They tried another fire," said the Kid. "Run off our horses, pulled boards from the stable, and set this room ablaze from the shed but we're putting it out." A fusillade of gunshots came from outside. Jim French, Yginio Salazar, Florencio Chavez, and Ignacio Gonzales burst through the door, smoke and bullets trailing them. All coughed and backed away. "They're in the stable," said Jim, blinking as he spoke. "The flames is straight in their line of fire."

"But you extinguished them?"

"We couldn't."

Soon, the fire grew. Mac had always assumed that adobe didn't burn, and, of course, it did not. Could dirt itself burn? But the beams and framework could, the vigas, the floor, the furniture inside. And once it got started, as he now learned, you couldn't get at it, it burned in the marrows and was impossible to stop. Like a slow fever, it grew and spread methodically; it transformed the very house into an oven. Plus, the smoldering fumes and smoke and oily residue seeped torturously through every crack and seam, down from the ceiling, up from the floor. Backing off, they shut the door to the burning storeroom and Billy and Yginio pushed a dresser against it.

They'd been, by now, in this house for five days. More than one hundred hours. Their usual malodorous bodies and clothes had ripened like fruit to a state beyond rot. To Mac, who had always sought explanations for his trials, nothing made sense, except he was embedded, nailed into the moment, then the next one, then the next. He was in a familiar place, in the middle. Do not speak of existence when it comes to Macky's bearings, speak of the mess. The clutter, the noise, the bullets all the time snapping into the house—this was all to be expected. The firing now relentless. Punch barking. Please feed him. Macky realized that their entire entourage had wound up in Sue's sitting room, and below him, on a table, her sketchbook was open to a pen-and-ink drawing of Lincoln's Torreon spread across two pages. The Torreon was not a symbol for anything, save artful intention. Nor were the flowers on the piano, the framed photos of houses Mac had never seen, of boys and girls he'd never met. Was one of them Sue? And gimcracks and knickknacks and little carved figures and waxed apples and pears, a herbarium, old brocade on the stuffed chairs. Sue had even bought a prie-dieu for this room, dear pious Sue. The flowers had never wilted here, had they? The wickedness of the world even rewrote nature. Macky noticed a place low on the wall just above the floor where the adobes appeared to have decomposed, and he thought, I must speak to Romolo. More
jaspe
perhaps. And the bowl going round. No, it couldn't be. Not now, not here. McSween took a seat and propped his head in his hands. Faults in his mind shifted, blocks of thought fractured; it was almost a relief. The fragments were such that he could occupy one, whatever its contents, as long as he pleased. Parties knowing themselves indebted to the Lantier estate are requested to call at my office and settle. Produce of every kind taken as payment. Delinquents will be forced. Request aid of the sheriff while the bowl goes round.

They were singing.
While the howl goes round, while the howl goes round.
Sue played the mortgaged keys, all sang the borrowed songs, and Yginio fiddled. Tunstall's favorite song was "The Tear," by Gumbert, Mac suddenly remembered. "Sing 'Factory Girl,'" someone said.

 

Pity me my darling
Pity me, I say:
Pity me my darling,
And carry me away.

How brave of Sue! She was playing the piano to keep their spirits up. The assembled sang the chorus, she warbled the verses, and fifteen-year-old Yginio sawed his violin. The children sang, too, save when distracted. And was that a real ax in little Davy's hand, who once more was chasing his sister? Sue's dresser rose, gems and money showered down, smoke filled the room; the sound of an explosion. Fire in the burst doorway. "Heave," someone said. A dozen men surrounded the Beatty grand piano and tipped it on its side and it floated through the door. Macky found himself collecting dollar bills, jewelry. Someone screamed in his face, "Is there any more powder kegs?"

"Powder kegs?"

Coughing and retching, they moved clothes, the prie-dieu, a chair, carved figurines into Sue's bedroom. Somebody took Macky's arm to guide him through the door and they found a black satchel for the treasure in his hands. Sue's lovely voice was at it again.
Some folks do,
they sang. The notes of the piano tumbled down an incline as though it hadn't been properly uprighted, or the house was on its side, or gravity had been suspended—tumbled clown, burst away, became smoke and air. The grace of God, David Shield once had said, won't carry a man through such troubles as these, it takes powder and ball. Then he went to Santa Fe. The only palliation those Irish admit of is bullets, I'm afraid, he'd told Mac on another occasion. Their pernicious stimulants give them a wild purpose which prayer cannot defeat, my friend. Do not wonder at the fact that once having tasted the evil sweets of sin and unrestrained behavior, on returning to the haunts of law-abiding folk they languish and pine for the irresponsible solitudes where neither laws nor restrictions imposed by morality have the least effect on their—

At one juncture, Mac found himself lifted up bodily as they moved from room to room, down the west wing, across the front portion, up the east wing to the kitchen, taking Sue's piano with them as they went, also her bedding, clothes, items of furniture, and, in Macky's satchel, her jewelry and cash. The house methodically devoured itself behind them. Sue played a new song in each new room - "Old Memories," "The Mill," "Ellen Bayne," "Wilt Thou Be True?"—but soon the chorus lost interest. Children screamed, smoke billowed, more windows burst, and Mac vaguely recalled, just after it happened, watching through the parlor window his wife and her sister and Lizzy's five children racing for a wagon outside on the street. In the wagon were Taylor Ealy and his family, fleeing Tunstall's store. Soldiers surrounded it. Twilight in Lincoln. Dark hills, white sky. The fire sent its heat ahead of itself, through the walls, beneath the floors, as though scouting fuel. The air grew heavier, smoke clung to their clothing, coughing and retching they slatter-pouched themselves.

All at once William Bonney yanked Macky's head from his hands by the hair and slapped his greasy face. They were in the kitchen now—the last room left. "Pull yourself together, man!" But all Mac could do was stare at a blue shirt with an anchor and a rope and, hand across his month, suppress a giggle. He raised his eyes to Billy's. The boy's expression had struck a fleeting mean between panic and rage, and his hat was on his head, his black hair licked and curled around his ears, he'd tied a bandanna around his skinny neck. "Jesus Christ, Macky!" He grabbed Mac's arms and shook them. Then, clapping his hands, he raced through the kitchen kicking soppy butts, shouting, "Get a leg on! Stir your sticks, turkeys!"

"I've lost my mind, boys," Mac heard himself say. Bonney, Tom, José, Harvey Morris, and Jim French raced out the door to a rip-tide of bullets parting the air. Dark figures in the yard, light cast by the fire, an outer darkness beyond. Francisco Zamora and Vicente Romero went next. Then Yginio Salazar and Florencio Chavez, one on either side, took McSween's arms and passed through the door and were in the hellish light. Mac recognized Harvey Morris on the ground draining into earth. Why weren't they moving? Across the yard, the Kid shoved the barrel of his Colt's into Robert Beckwith's mouth while Bob Ollinger behind them, the mountain gorilla, reloaded his Whitney. Yginio went down. "Surrender, McSween!" someone shouted from the fence.

"I surrender!" he boomed, but ahead of him Vicente and Florencio were dashing for the chicken house, firing at whatever moved. No one held his arms. Obscure figures all around, running shadows, smoke, repeated flash of muzzles, zipsting of bullets. The chicken house jumped, its planks splintering and shredding. "I shall never surrender!" Mac heard himself recant while entering the hailstorm, and he found that he was spared. The bullets must have missed. Warm spit filled his mouth. I le ran like hell until nothing was before him, he tumbled through darkness, and happened to fall on top of Robert Beckwith, rolling over on his legs, stars and smoke above his face. Now it was Macky's turn to stop existing. The stars and the smoke were inside a vacancy. He owed David Shield a saddle, he recalled, and posted the note in his mental files. The following morning, chickens could be seen pecking out Alexander McSween's eyes.

When the surviving Dolanites examined the bodies they laughed at the bullet holes. The dead were not outraged. Their bones would become New Mexico dust breathed by future tourists. They flipped Yginio over. "I'd like to plant one more bullet right between this greaser's eyes," John Kinney said.

"No," said Milo Pierce. "He's dead but his face looks pretty good. Let's leave him alone. His mother might want to remember what he looked like."

"Fuck-all," said Kinney, walking away. He picked up a loose adobe brick, turned around, and heaved it at Yginio, striking his hip. "Dead as a herring."

Later, Yginio crawled through the gate, scrabbled through brush and yucca to the river, dragged himself along the riverbank. He reached the house of his sister-in-law a half-mile away with a bullet in his back and another in his shoulder and managed to live another fifty-eight years.

T
HE KID RAN
bent over crashing through brush down toward the Bonito below the burning house. Once beyond the circle of light he was forced to go blind and trip and grope. Branches of Gambel oaks whipped his ear. Trunks of cottonwoods loomed sufficiently dark inside the greater darkness to caution him to slow. His boots caught on sage, yucca stalks grazed his neck and snapped through his legs. Turpentine smell of the needling junipers he was forced to blunder through to gain the river, and the wafting acrid odor of Macky's burning timbers underlying that. Then the soft sand. Mud-suck. Trickle of water. And Billy mucking through to reach the other bank and traverse the open fields and begin the slow climb toward a faint illumination on the northern slopes cast by the fire. The shooting hadn't stopped. Who was there left to shoot? Crossing open ground, he knew that the danger now was stray bullets whizzing past and thumping into earth, or worse, striking rocks. Zig and zag; they follow you, regardless. Rocks and boidders in the way, more sage, bladed yucca. Once in the hills, with hoarse burning throat he jog-stumbled up. His Colt's 'Thunderer, he noticed, was still in his hand. Best to keep it there. Then he tripped on a rock and, sputtering forward, changed his mind and holstered the pistol so as not to shoot his foot off. Tie vaguely made out a bank of low clouds the higher he climbed; they obscured the stars. And he perceived, looking up, the wounded reflection of McSween's burning house swirling in the sky.