The Pistoleer (51 page)

And we drank. Sweet Christ, did we drink! Through all of July we were naked and half drunk more often than not. About a year later I would discover the wonders of an opium pipe, and the hazy, floating, unreal sense it gave me was very much like the feeling I had when I was naked and drunk with Wes.

Whenever we did put on our clothes and venture into the streets to get something to eat or just take a walk through the park, we drew stares. I could hear the whispers in those eyes:
John Wesley Hardin and his woman. The killer and his whore.
Those eyes glared at me—but they cut away damn fast when Wes turned toward them. I’d pull Wes’s arm tighter against my breast and give all those sons of bitches my best go-to-hell smile. We were like a tiny independent country of two surrounded by the alien nation of El Paso. And it felt perfectly natural.

One night when we were in bed, the light from the window facing the street made my private hair glow like a coal fire. Wes pretended to warm his hands at it, then laughed and buried his face in it.

“I can’t get enough of this,” he said, “I just can’t.” After all those years in prison without his share of hair pie, he was doing his damnedest to try and catch up.

S
ometimes when he went out for cigars and the newspapers I’d leaf through his manuscript. He usually worked on it an hour or so in the morning and sometimes a little more in the evening while I took my bath.

Christ, what a story. I suppose a good deal of it was true, but I couldn’t imagine anybody’s life being
that
full of blood. What I remember most about it, however, was the total lack of self-pity—and I loved him for that.

Every day, drunk or sober, he practiced with his pistols, and I never got bored with watching. He’d stand in front of the mirror, one gun on his hip, one in a vest holster, and he’d practice for a solid half hour. He’d never say a word the whole time. He’d draw and
click,
draw and
click,
changing positions, drawing and clicking from every which way, shooting himself in the glass over and over, looking himself dead in the eyes. I have posed in my skin for painters, and the look on his face was the look I saw on theirs. I know it sounds silly, but I always got the feeling he was disappointed when he was done—like the only thing that would have satisfied him would have been to beat the fellow in the mirror to the draw.

B
ut God
damn
men anyway! They all talk like they can never get enough of sex, but that’s only because they don’t get enough chance
at
it. But you let them have all they want of it and they get their fill damn quick.

After a month of going at it with me day and night, he started pining for an evening in the saloons with the boys. The card tables, the dicing at the bar, the beer and the happy bullshit. I’d made him fat on sex and now he was feeling skinny for the saloons. He didn’t say it, but I could tell. One night he said he was going for a newspaper and then didn’t come home till nearly three in the morning, smelling like a bar rag. I was so mad I didn’t say a word to him all the next day. That afternoon he said he was going to the office and I said something smart-ass about his office having swinging doors. He said I’d best not talk like I was his mother or his wife because I sure as hell wasn’t either one. He slammed the door so hard behind him some of the plaster flaked off the wall. That remark about not being his wife hurt a lot more than I care to admit even now.

He came reeling in at four
A.M.
and flopped into bed with all his clothes on and started snoring up a storm the second his head hit the pillow. I’d been hefting the bottle pretty good myself and was ready for a fight, but I passed out right after he did.

The next morning I was still sore about that “wife” remark, but that’s not the main reason I was so mad at him. Mainly, it was because I was afraid. I’d been having such bad dreams. I was afraid somebody was going to shoot him dead while he was running around out there drunk. And I
hated
being afraid, I’d always hated it more than anything. I was furious that he’d made me be so frightened for him. And then
he
gets all closemouthed and sulky with me, like
he
was the one who’d been wronged and
I
was the one who should apologize. So there I was, scared for him and angry that I was. Naturally anger got the upper hand.

“The great John Wesley Hardin,” I said, “staggering around drunk in the streets like some rumpot. Real impressive. I always heard you were such a fearsome fellow, and now I know why. People are afraid you might breathe on them.”

“You’d know a lot about the smell of rumpots,” he said. “I guess that’s a fact.”

“Those saloon tramps aren’t your friends. You’re nothing but a sideshow to them, don’t you know that.”

“You don’t know a goddamned thing.”

“I know when I’m making a fool of myself, which is more than I can say for you.”

“Nobody calls
me
a fool.”

“Fool, fool, fool!”

He backhanded me into the wall and I felt the blood run hot out of my nose. I went at him with both fists swinging. He caught my wrists, so I tried to knee him in the balls, but I lost my balance and fell down. He gave my hair such a yank he nearly broke my neck. I bit his wrist and he yelped and smacked me on the side of the head hard enough to make me see stars. Next thing I knew, we were wrestling around on the floor and one of my tits came free of my dress and he caught hold of it. I felt my nipples turn hard as bullets. I grabbed him by the hair and pulled his face down to me and bit his lips so hard the blood popped into my mouth. He growled deep in his throat and pinched my nipple hard and his stiff cock jabbed against my belly. As he shoved my skirt up and yanked off my drawers, I undid his belt and caught hold of him—and then we were humping hard and loud on the floor until we both came like we’d been dropped from the ceiling.

It was exciting, all right—but I wouldn’t want to do it that way every night of the week.

Anyhow, that knockdown session on the floor didn’t really settle anything. At supper the next night he said he had a case to try in Van Horn and would be gone a couple of days. I wanted to go with him but he said no, he’d be too busy with the case and didn’t want any distractions. I didn’t believe he had a damn case, but I kept it to myself. The truth was, he hadn’t opened a law book more than a couple of times since the day I first walked into his office. Later on, when it sure as hell didn’t matter anymore, I found out my suspicions had been right—the case he’d had in Van Horn was a redhead named Lil.

I
was miserable about him being gone—and mad at him, and afraid of every bad possibility prowling through my imagination. A few hours after his train pulled out that afternoon, I was whirly-eyed drunk. I’d lately been drinking like a catfish anyway, and the minute he was gone I started pouring myself the drinks even faster than usual.

I don’t know why I did what I did next. Hell, I was so drunk I couldn’t remember much about it the next day. I recall sitting at the window, drinking and looking down at the people in the street, talking and smiling at each other like they didn’t have a care in the world. I remember feeling like I was going to bust wide open if I didn’t do
something.
According to the arrest report—and to a lot of witnesses—what I did was go traipsing down Overland Street with my Remington in my hand, pointing it left and right at people, and laughing like hell when they scattered like scared chickens. They say I hollered, “I’m John Wesley Hardin, you sorry sons of bitches, and I can outshoot any swinging dick in town!” That’s not as hard to believe as the claim that I shot out a streetlight at eighty paces. I was a good shot, but I couldn’t have done it sober, I don’t think.

I have a fuzzy recollection of John Selman—the policeman son, not the murdering constable father—sweet-talking me on the street and asking me to hand over the pistola. I remember the gun slipping out of my hand and discharging when it hit the sidewalk and the bullet ricocheting off a wall. He said in the report that I dropped it when I tried to twirl it. He quick grabbed it up and put the arm on me.

That was it for the sweet-talk. He was real sarcastic about calling me “the grieving widow.” He said—and plenty of witnesses backed him on this too—I cursed him like a muleskinner all the way to the jail. He said I told him Wes would give him a new asshole right between the eyes for treating me so low.

He wanted to jail me till I sobered up, but Jeff Milton wouldn’t have me put in a cell. Jeff took me direct to Judge Howe, drunk as I was. I know the judge gave me a lecture—I have a vague picture of his face looking all serious and his big thick finger shaking at me. I had a terrible feeling the next day that I’d laughed and said something nasty about what his finger looked like, wagging up and down at me that way. Anyhow, to make a long drunk story short, I was fined fifty dollars and Jeff Milton took me home.

W
es must have heard about it the minute he got off the train. He came charging into the room and threw his valise against the wall. It knocked his manuscript off the table in a flutter of pages. He looked like he was ready to rip me to pieces. I could see how hard he was fighting to keep himself under control. He sat on the bed with his fists tight and white on his knees and made me sit in a chair across the room and tell him my side of what happened. I did the best I could, considering how little I could remember about the whole thing. I wasn’t lying when I finished up by telling him I was sorry, and I didn’t talk back when he said, “You sure are. You’re about the sorriest bitch in this whole sorry town.” I figured I had that coming.

He poured himself a glass of whiskey and sat there sipping from it and staring at me without saying anything for a long time. I kept my mouth shut and waited for him to make up his mind about what to do. I was sorry for what I’d done, but I wasn’t going to let myself get beat like a dog for it. I’d decided that if he tried it, I’d holler out the window like I was on fire.

But the whiskey seemed to soothe him. He put the empty glass aside and rubbed his face with both hands and made the most tired sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Then he got down on his hands and knees and carefully gathered up his manuscript and stacked it on the table. Then he took me by the hand and we got in bed with our clothes on and just lay there holding each other gently. I could feel his heart beating hard against my breast.

H
e
had
to do something about it, though, something loud and public. He couldn’t see it any other way. He was John Wesley Hardin and nobody, by God, could arrest his woman and speak to her like she was some common tramp. It was a point of pride with him. That’s why I still refuse to accept the blame for what happened afterward, no matter what people say. I knew my stunt in the streets was wrong, and I was sorry I did it, and I told Wes as much. But I could have apologized till Doomsday and it wouldn’t have done a thing to ease his injured pride—his “honor,” as he called it. He had to do something about the way Young Selman had treated me or it would look like he was admitting his woman wasn’t worth defending—and only a man without honor would ever attach to a worthless woman.

“For God’s sake, Wes,” I said, “it’s almost the twentieth century. Nobody gives a damn about such silliness. Why don’t we just leave this awful place? Let’s go to Santa Fe. Let’s go to Denver.” The look he gave me was more pitiful than angry.

The next morning he went out and found Young Selman walking his beat and gave him loud hell for arresting me. I heard all about it from Patsy Webster, one of the dozen witnesses. She said Wes called Young Selman a bully and a coward for arresting a woman. “You wouldn’t have dared done it if I’d been in town,” Wes told him. They say Young Selman looked scared but held his ground and took the bullyragging with his mouth shut. Wes almost always wore a gun or two in defiance of the town ordinance against doing so, but he usually kept them out of sight under his coat or vest. This time, however, he opened his coat wide so Young Selman could clearly see the pistols. “I’m giving you fair warning,” Wes told him. “You come near her again and you’ll answer to me.”

H
e was quiet and moody during the next two days. He cleaned his pistols and practiced his quick draws. He dealt himself hands of cards. Now and then he sat at the little writing table and wrote more of his book. In the evening he’d put on his guns and go down to one or another of the saloons, have a couple of drinks and play a few hands. My heart would lodge in my throat from the minute he walked out the door until the moment he came back. I couldn’t help feeling he was trying to prove something—though I can’t say what it was or who he thought he was proving it to. He drank steadily but only got drunk enough to stay loose. I believe his head was just full of snakes.

Sometimes, when he didn’t know I was watching, I’d see him staring at himself in the mirror with such intense concentration he looked like he was trying hard to place a face he hadn’t seen in a long time. He made love like he was dreaming about it instead of really doing it. His touch, his kiss, even his cock—they all felt like a stranger’s.

T
hat Saturday he said he’d been thinking over what I’d said about moving to Santa Fe, and he now thought it wasn’t a bad idea. “The territory needs lawyers,” he said. “We can get a new start, breathe some mountain air that’s not full of desert dust.”

It was wonderful news—but when he said he wanted me to leave ahead of him while he took care of closing his office and paying off a few bills and such, I felt a shiver run through me. He wanted me to go up there right away and check into a hotel and start looking around town for a nice office for him. I said I wanted to wait so we could leave together, but he said no, we’d do it the way he said. We nearly got into an argument about it, but I caught myself in time to avoid it. All right, I said, we’d do it his way.

O
n Sunday morning I left El Paso on the train for Santa Fe. I’d had a sleepless night and was red-eyed and jumpy. The passing landscape glared so whitely it hurt to look out at it. The air lunging through the open windows was as hot as desperate breath and didn’t do a thing but swirl dust through the coach. Still, I was so tired the rocking car lulled me into a sweaty, fitful sleep.