Gunman's Rhapsody

Thirteen

It took Fred White two days to die calmly of peritonitis. Wyatt and Mattie walked alone back from the funeral in the early afternoon, on a bright fall day with no wind and the Dragoon Mountains clear and sharp against the cloudless sky northeast of Tombstone.

“They appointed a new city marshal?” Mattie said.

She rested her hand lightly on Wyatt’s crooked arm as they walked.

“Virgil, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Made him assistant marshal,” Wyatt said, “but since there’s no marshal he’s actually the one.”

“Why not just make him city marshal, then?”

Wyatt shrugged.

“Too many Rebs in the council,” Wyatt said. “They needed someone quick, ’fore the cowboys moved in and rawhided the town, and Virgil’s the man for the job. But the Rebs don’t want to give it permanent to a Republican.”

“So they sort of half did it,” Mattie said.

“Just till the special election,” Wyatt said.

“Won’t Virgil have a head start, though?” Mattie said. “Being as he’s already in the job?”

“Maybe.”

They paused at the foot of Fremont Street and looked back at the cemetery on the top of the small rise where Fred White was.

“I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” Mattie said.

Wyatt nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I know you are.”

“You don’t seem much to care about me anymore,” Mattie said. “But I care about you, Wyatt.”

“I know.”

“You don’t,” Mattie said, “do you?”

“Care about you?”

“Yes.”

“You use my name. I support you. I don’t embarrass you, running to the whores all the time.”

“I know. You’re good that way, Wyatt. You do your duty. But you don’t love me, do you?”

Wyatt was silent for a while, looking across at Boot Hill and at the long empty sweep of hard country beyond it.

“No, I guess I don’t,” he said.

“Then why in hell did you take up with me, if you didn’t love me?”

Again Wyatt was silent for a time, looking out at the barren land.

“God, Mattie, I don’t know. I guess it was Jim had a woman and Virgil had a woman, and it was time for me to have a woman.”

“And I was there,” she said.

Wyatt nodded slowly.

“That’s about the truth of it, Mattie.”

Mattie’s head dropped and her shoulders shook, but she made no sound.

“I’m sorry, Mattie, I really am.”

She didn’t look up or speak. She turned, with her head still down and her shoulders still shaking, and walked away from him, toward the front door of the house they shared. Wyatt watched her go. He wished he loved her. He wished he could even like her. But he didn’t love her and he couldn’t seem to like her. At best, he realized, all he could do was feel sorry.

“Goddamn,” he said out loud.

But there was no one to hear him, and so he stood alone and silent in the still day, under the high blue sky, and looked at the door that Mattie had closed behind her, and thought of Josie Marcus.