The Shootist

The barber's name was Gigante.

He nodded, he smiled, he nodded, he smiled, but could not utter a word. He was terrified. When, in the process of shaving, he applied a cold towel rather than a hot, and Books let out an oath, he jumped. Books ordered him to trim his mustache, and the hair in his nose, and the hair in his ears. After shearing the gun man's long hair, Gigante took from the pocket of his white jacket a whisk broom, brushed the clippings from his customer's shoulders to the carpet, got down on hands and knees, brushed the clippings on the carpet into a pile, took a paper sack from another pocket, brushed the pile of clippings into the paper sack, and rising, clutched the sack to his chest.

"How much do I owe you?" Books asked.

Gigante could scarcely speak. "Dollar."

"You owe me ten."

"Ten?"

"For that sack of J. B. Books's hair. You will sell it for twenty. So give me ten."

The barber dropped the sack, gave him ten, picked up the sack.

"Thank you," said Books. "Thank," said Gigante.

It was noon. He would have liked to inspect himself in the mirror to see what the barber had done, but that would mean getting out of the chair and going to the mirror, and he had to hoard himself. Judging that there was enough drug left to put him under till two o'clock, he drained the bottle. He had been unable to take nourishment for a day and a half, and he had told his landlady not to bother with lunch for him. He lay down on the bed.

He heard hoofs, nearing. Leaping from the brush, he leveled a Remington at the rider and ordered him to throw down his wallet. The man was thin and elderly and had a claw hand for a left hand, cocked perpetually at the wrist, the fingers stiff and splayed. Reining up, he reached inside his shirt. Books waggled his gun in warning. "I ain't armed," the rider croaked. "You be careful of that nickel-plate." Slipping a purse from inside his shirt, he tossed it. Books let his eyes follow, and therefore did not see the antiquated cap-and-ball pistol which appeared suddenly in the horseman's good hand, nor did he hear the explosion because the bullet exploded in his abdomen, crazed through the vitals, was deflected by the spine, and lodged, spent, in the socket of his left hip. He dropped the Remington and fell to his knees.

"My God, you've murdered me!"

"Bring me my purse."

"I can't! My God!"

"Bring it, you young bastard, or I'll put another one through the same hole."

One hand grasping the purse, the other stopping his stomach as though it were a barrel with the bung out, and blubbering, staggering to the horseman, Books handed up the purse.

"Thankee," said the rider, putting away purse and weapon and taking reins.

"You won't leave me here!"

"Won't I?" The old jasper considered him. "I'll do you a favor, though. You've got a bellyache you ain't a-going to get shet of. You can die slow or now. If you hanker, I'll kill you."

"Kill me!"

"If'n I was in your fix, I'd be obliged. I'm a fair shot, as you see, and you look to me as if you've sucked the front tit long enough."

Books backed off and sank to his knees again and began to wail like a child. His mouth hung open in shock. Saliva dripped from his chin.

"Suit yourself," said Claw Hand, turning as he rode on. "Don't try to hold nobody else up before you die, Sonny. You ain't worth a damn at it."

His wails and the spittle on his chin woke him. It was past three o'clock, not two.

He hauled himself off the bed and began to dress as rapidly as the damage done to his innards by the old man's bullet would allow.

He put on the white shirt she had washed and ironed, and the gray bow tie. Back to the wall, he tugged on his pants, then sat down again to grapple with socks and the black lizard boots the boy had shined.

That done, he stood before the mirror and contrived, without acknowledging in the glass that ghastly stranger who claimed to be kin to him, to run a comb through his hair and his mustache.

His vest, which he got from the closet, hung too loosely about his ribs. The guns sagged. He had lost that much weight. Cursing under his breath, opening and banging shut the drawers of the chiffonier, he found a safety pin, removed the vest, and pinned a fold in the back, then put it on again and was satisfied. He wound his watch and dropped it in a vest pocket.

He next put on his black Prince Albert coat, in so doing uncovering the headstone. Opening the top drawer of the chiffonier, he took out the money cached there, brought it to the library table, and sat down. There were two hundred dollars from his horse, the photographer's fifty, the undertaker's forty, fifty from Steinmetz, and ten from the barber. Emptying his wallet except for a dollar—that and the nickel in his pants would be sufficient, he was sure, unto the day—he added the bills to those on the table and counted. The total came to $532. That was what he had to show for his half century: five hundred-odd dollars. He had won more than that up in Oklahoma once, in one hand, on a pair of treys. From the table drawer he took the envelope and sheet of paper he had asked of her the preceding day, telling her he might send a letter to a friend. Using the table top as surface, he penciled a note:

Mrs. Rogers:

Use this money and send the boy away to school. See that

Beckum bureys me proper and uses my headstone. 1 have

sold my things to the secondhand man so give them to

him.

J. B. Books

Folding the sheet around the money, he stuffed it in the envelope, licked the flap and sealed the envelope, and standing, placed it upright against the back of the armchair.

He stepped to the center of the room. Raising his right hand and arm, sliding the hand inside his coat, he drew the Remington from its holster on his left side: once, twice, thrice. He did not try for speed but for fluidity of movement, the arm rising naturally, the fingers closing easily and surely about the handle, the withdrawal smooth, the entire gesture as unstudied and reflexive as though he had reached for and brought forth a cigar. He then did likewise with the Remington on his right side: once, twice, thrice.

He went to the closet, got his gray Stetson, blew dust from the brim, reshaped the crease, tried the hat on, took it off.

Picking up the crimson velvet pillow he had stolen from the whorehouse in Creede, Colorado, he moved slowly to the door, and for a moment rested his forehead against it, dizzy with exertion. Under his longjohns he was dripping wet. He tried to calculate the number of days this room had been his home but could not. He peered sideways, at a framed picture on the wall. The setting was a woodland glade, and a tranquil pool about which, gazing at their reflections in the pool, knelt several nymphs, clad just diaphanously enough to reveal their rather buxom charms. They were not alone. Spying upon them from the foliage was a gang of half-men, half-goats, with horns and hoofs and hairy legs and tails, who appeared to him to be working up a lust to leap and lay hell out of the nymphs.

He thought: Nobody will ever believe I could have done this today and neither by God will I.

He left the room.

Had he turned and looked around it a last time, he might have noticed the shadow in the lace curtains at the west window.

He entered the Constantinople at three forty-one, having sneaked through alleys and side streets to avoid encountering the marshal or his deputies. He wanted ample time to make ready. Since the saloon was new, it had developed little patronage as yet. There were only two men at the bar, and the barkeep. He walked to the bar, bought a shot of whiskey, and carried it with him to the left rear corner of the room. Here he stood, uncertain whether to sit in one of the three wine booths built into the corner or at a table. It occurred to him that the walls of a booth might obstruct his vision, if not of the front doors, then of the archway at rear center, which opened into the gambling room, and he seated himself therefore at a corner table in front of the booths. From this vantage he would have the front doors in full view and could keep an eye, at least peripherally, on the archway.

He cupped the butt of each Colt's, one holster tied to his left thigh, one to his right. He was ready, whatever that meant. The knowledge of gunplay he had accumulated in his twenty years was scant, as it was of girls and kings and arithmetic and cows and prayer and mountains and everything except how to draw and fan and fire a revolver unerringly and how to hate himself and how to deliver milk and cream and butter. He touched a pustule on his neck. He would not have bet a dime of the money he had taken from his father that Books would actually show up at four o'clock, but as he lifted the glass to his lips, so palsied was his hand that he spilled some of the whiskey. It was not fear. It was an almost childlike hope—hope that this first, this best, perhaps this only chance he would ever have to distinguish himself in any way would not elude him, that the great assassin would in fact appear, and that he, Jay Cobb, could shoot him dead.

Hat in hand, pillow under arm, he stopped in the entry, facing the parlor. "Mrs. Rogers," he said.

She rose too swiftly from the sofa. She had waited there for him, seeing nothing, hands folded in her lap, counting with the clock, all afternoon.

"How grand you look," she smiled.

"Thank you. So do you."

"Thank you."

They kept that formal distance from each other which may be more intimate than an embrace.

"Dry process cleaning is—is very good, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes. It is smelly, though."

"That's the naphtha."

"The naphtha."

The clock ticked. She knew what it had required of him to dress himself, to leave his room. He knew how close she was to the tears he had forbidden. Silently, each entreated of the other a sacrifice, and a grace, which was humanly impossible.

"I am going to a saloon to have a drink," he said, taking masculine initiative. "I have not been out for a long time."

"How nice," she smiled. "Indeed you haven't. And you have a beautiful day for it. It's very warm. We're having what we call 'false spring.'"

"Oh?"

This exchange left them mute again. Her words to him, on the day of his arrival, worked like worms within the darkness of her soul: "I'm glad you're not staying long, Mr. Hickok. I don't believe I like you." And later: "You are a vicious, notorious individual utterly lacking in character or decency." For his part, he recalled with chagrin his underestimate of her at the beginning. The West was filling up with women like her, he had observed to himself, and he would not give a pinch of dried owl shit for the lot of them. Trapped in self-reproach, each deferred to the other.

Unexpectedly he put out his hand. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Rogers."

Their fingers met but did not twine. "Good afternoon, Mr. Books."

He opened the door and, for the first time since he had gone for a drive in the country with mother and son, stepped into the world.

He blinked. Light blinded him. Din deafened him—the rumble of a wagon, voices, a train whistle in the distance. He stood bewildered. Finally he put on his Stetson, and holding the pillow tightly under an arm, moved cautiously across the porch to the steps. He paused. He must descend them. He had left the house door open. He must not waste himself going back to close it. He squinted. The street corner he judged to be nine rods away. Weak as he was, and drenched with sweat, and in such pain that he ground his teeth together till they squeaked, he could walk nine rods.

He descended the steps—one and—two and—three and— four and—five; then paused again on the wooden sidewalk. The nape of his neck told him she was watching from a window.

He started. Once he had unlocked his legs, once he heard the familiar cadence of his boot heels on the sidewalk slats, once he was convinced he could indeed negotiate the nine rods, he opened himself as wide as he had the door of the house and let the world in. The day was buoyant. A ship of tropic air had voyaged inland from the Gulf of Mexico with a freight of spices, and this day on the desert was informed with a balm and sensuality that made him long to cry out, not with pain but with delight. He could not remember an afternoon more beautiful than this. It seemed to him that he had never before been so alive.

He reached the corner in two jerks of a lamb's tail, or thought he did, and waited there, nodding approbation of his feat as old men nod.

A little girl, her hair done up in ribbons, trotted along the street, rolling a hoop before her.

"Good day, madam," he said, and doffed his hat, and bowed.

She caught the hoop and stared at him, then gasped and ran away, frightened, clutching her hoop. It was his cachectic face.

Waiting, he listened. After a time it came to him, the high ringing sound, iron on iron, like that of clapper on bell, louder now, and drawing nigh.

Gillom Rogers climbed through the west window and made straight for the armchair. He tore open the envelope, unfolded the sheet of paper. He read the note to his mother. He counted the money, grinning. Then, putting money in one pants pocket, envelope and note in the other, he climbed out the window and skulked along the back of the house, turned, and stationed himself at a point from which he could spy on the corner and the man there.

Serrano, or El Tuerto, or Cross-eye, as he was more often called, entered the Constantinople at three fifty-one, accompanied by a man named Koopmann. There was a man at the bar, and the barkeep, and a pimply kid wearing two guns seated at a table in front of the wine booths at the left rear corner of the saloon. Serrano and Koopmann stepped to the bar and bought a drink. The barkeep was barely civil to them, his attitude implying that the Constantinople catered to a better class of patrons. On another occasion the pair might have taken umbrage at the slight, but they had bigger fish to fry this day.

Serrano chose a table dead center of the room, back to the wall. Koopmann sat beside him. Cross-eye pulled a Peacemaker from his belt and laid it in his lap, while Koopmann did likewise with a Navy Colt. Koopmann had for some time had business associations with Serrano, and the latter had enlisted his support this afternoon on both material and personal grounds. If he, Serrano, were laid low, he had argued, Koopmann was incapable of rustling cattle successfully by himself, so it behooved him to see that he, Serrano, retained his health and his acumen. His personal reasons El Tuerto put as logically. Some gringo cattlemen had recently declared their intention to kill him if he did not kill J. B. Books if J. B. Books did not kill him. And since he did not care to chance being killed by J. B. Books, notwithstanding the celebrated gun man's physical condition or state of mind, or by the gringo cattlemen for that matter, he declared his intention to kill Koopmann if he, Koopmann, did not assist him in killing J. B. Books.

They sipped whiskey. Koopmann, a big, clean-shaven man, wore flowered suspenders and a derby hat. Serrano watched the front doors with his right eye and with his left, the exotropic, watched Jay Cobb.

The streetcar turned the corner a block away and, like a small boat upon a lazy river, glided in dignity toward him, drawn by a somnolent mule yclept Mandy by all El Pasoans. The car was small, seating but twelve passengers, and painted bright yellow with black trim and lettering: TRANVIAS DE CIUDAD JUAREZ above the windows, the numeral 1 in the center, and El Paso & Juárez along the side. Exit was over a platform at the rear, entrance at the front, up two steps onto a platform where the boatman, or conductor, sat upon a three-legged stool, sombrero over eyes, reins in one hand, cashbox beside him.

As though it knew he wished to board, the streetcar stopped. Books mounted the platform, noted the "5¢" on the box, located the nickel in his pocket, and dropped the fare.

"I want to go to the Constantinople."

This was too many syllables for the conductor, a Charon of advanced years and innumerable miles behind the mule.

"The Connie?" Books tried.

"Ah. Con-nee. Si, señor."

Books entered the car and, placing his pillow upon the bench, seated himself. There were no other passengers. The conductor clucked, the car moved.

He had never ridden on a streetcar and, had it not been for his suffering, might have enjoyed this modern means of transport. The mule plodded, the roadbed was smooth, the roll of four iron wheels upon iron rails produced a not unpleasant monotone. On his stool the driver dozed, reins in hand, resting in peaceful certitude that neither buggy nor bicycle nor eccentricity of nature would stay his partner from the slow but sure completion of his appointed rounds. It seemed spring, but it was not, for the mulberry trees along the street did not as yet show bud.

The car stopped, and another passenger boarded, paid her fare, and seated herself near Books but opposite. She was dainty, and blond, in her middle twenties, and he believed her at once the loveliest girl he had ever seen. He twisted sideways and put an elbow out the window, the better to admire her. There was dew upon her lips; under his gaze her lashes beat like wings. She wore a long dress of lavender silk, with leg o' mutton sleeves. White lace foamed from her cleavage to her throat and garnished her skirt. She crossed her legs, affording him a glimpse of white stocking, a shapely ankle, and white high-button shoes. Adorning her blonde tresses was a hat of white straw which bloomed with lavender carnations. She carried a white parasol upon which no drop of rain would presume to fall. She could have been the darling of the town's most affluent family or the costliest jewel of a parlor house—it was impossible to say. To the critical observer, her beauty might have been flawed by the livid bruise upon her cheek, but only a little.

A block behind the streetcar Gillom Rogers followed, keeping interval with steady pace.

Since the afternoon was unseasonably warm, the doors were open and, entering the Constantinople, Jack Pulford stopped short.

The barkeep looked at him, then at Jay Cobb, then at Serrano and Koopmann, then at Pulford again, and aware, suddenly, that an event of some enormity was about to take place upon his premises, froze, glass in hand, polish cloth in glass.

The gambler stood almost at attention. The Constantinople was new, prices were higher than elsewhere, and he had expected to have the saloon, except for the barkeep, to himself. The three patrons looked at him, recognized him. He looked at them. The young two-gun tough he did not recognize, nor the man in the derby. Serrano he did. He took in their positions, too, relative to the doors behind him, to the archway at the rear, and to each other. He reflected. Maturity whispered that discretion was the better part of valor, impulse shouted to turn and walk out while there was time. Instead, having made a choice, he stepped left and took a chair at a table in the front so that he had a full sweep of the room.

To cover his apprehension, he examined his fingernails. He smoothed a sleeve of his white silk shirt. He weighed, and decided against having a drink. He slipped and reholstered the Smith & Wesson on his right hip and was conscious that his palm was damp and reflected on that. Jack Pulford had come to the Constantinople willingly. He had felt at first that his own, earlier statement, prompted by what to him was a justifiable vanity, had left him no alternative. "There was a man," he had said to a full faro table with reference to J. B. Books, "I could've beat." And when the Rogers kid had delivered the challenge from Books before another full table therefore, he was caught in a squeeze chute: put up or shut up, make good his mouth or go crawl. But last night, pondering Books's motive, trying to divine his hole card, he had finally sorted out the hand. What he had received was not a challenge but an invitation, a plea almost, for help. Books seemed to be saying, Look, I am cashing in, chip by chip, and I am squeamish about hurrying matters along by myself, so meet me tomorrow at four o'clock and do my killing for me. I have heard there is no better man in west Texas for the job. So meet me at four, Pulford, and write your name in the history books. No one will remember that I was on my last legs, no one will suspect. All they will remember is that J. B. Books was faced and killed in a saloon in El Paso in 1901 by one Jack Pulford. That was it, that was the reason, the gambler satisfied himself. What else could a dying man possibly desire beyond a dose of merciful lead?

So he had arrived as invited, ready to do business, and now this—a marked deck if he had ever seen one. If all Books wanted was an execution, why swell the guest list, why ask a drooling, double-gun idiot and low characters like Cross-eye and Derby Hat to the affair? They were obviously waiting for four o'clock, as he was. It made no damned sense.

He drew his watch. He would soon have an answer. It was three fifty-five.

Jack Pulford shot his cuffs. The Constantinople suited his taste to a t. In a day or two, he resolved, he would find out who had financed it and inquire what they would pay a faro dealer with his style.

He glanced at the other three again, with disdain. He would win anyone's money, that was his profession, but when it came to high stakes, to life or death, he favored the company of his peers.

The streetcar halted. The conductor pointed across the street. "Con-nee," he said.

"Thank you."

Books attempted to stand and lift the crimson pillow with him so that he would not have to stoop for it, but could not. When on his feet, he bent at the knees, picked it up, and took it to the forward platform, to the conductor.

"For you," he said.

The Mexican did not get his intention. Books gestured at the stool.

"Ah!" The conductor accepted the pillow, placed it on the stool, and sat down again, smiling. "Es muy grande! Gracias, señor!"

Books turned and moved back through the car, toward the exit platform. But rather than passing the lovely girl in lavender and white, he paused and removed his hat. He swayed.

"Will you rise, ma'am?" he asked.

She had been conscious of his admiration during the ride, had watched him as he presented the pillow to the conductor, but she looked at him bravely now for the first time, at his face, the face from which a child had fled, and drew breath. She rose. Her eyes filled.

She knew.

He took her in his arms and kissed her long and ardently. Men in their hosts, young and old, innocent and corrupt, had paid her for her favors, but she put her arms about him of her own free will as though to give him what she could in recompense for this, the last gift she guessed, of his manhood.

He let her go and walked drunkenly to the rear of the car, to the platform, and put on his hat, and stepped down, one and, two and, felt the ageless earth beneath his boots.

It was three fifty-eight.

He thought: I will make them wait on me a little. It is such a beautiful afternoon.

He leaned against a brick building, one of the largest in town, the recently constructed Myar Opera House. Beside him, a framed poster announced a concert that night by the El Paso Symphony Orchestra. The program would include, so he read, selections from Balfe's Bohemian Girl, Mascagni's Intermezzo Sinfonico, and Von Flotow's overture to Stradella.

He thought: When I walk in there, they will think there is a lot of me to kill. They will be wrong. Tarrant owns my horse and saddle. The barber has bought my hair. The secondhand man will have my watch and such, my guns will go to the boy. The photographer has my likeness. My cancer, and my corpse, belong to Beckum. That reporter did not get my reputation, though. Serepta cannot sell my name. And the reverend went away without my soul. So I have kept my valuables. They will not be wrong after all, then, the three of them. There is still a lot of me to kill.

Down the street, hiding in the doorway of a small cigar manufactory, Gillom Rogers waited, watched. Now and then he touched a trousers pocket as though to reassure himself that the money was there.

A bolt of pain sheered through Books from hip to hip. He was stricken by a paroxysm of such terrible intensity that his knees buckled, that he clawed at the brick behind him with his fingers to keep from falling, that he clenched his jaws to keep from screaming in the street. Counterpoint to the pain, all four lines played through his mind in perfect harmony and tempo: "Weave a circle round him thrice/And close your eyes with holy dread/For he on honey-dew hath fed/And drunk the milk of Paradise."

He thought: Well. I am fifty-one years old and I have finally learned some poetry.

He checked his watch again. It was four-two. He put his back to the brick and stood erect and brought both arms close in to his ribs, and closer, until he had the fellowship of the guns. Then, through the sunlight of his pride, under the shadow of his agony, J. B. Books crossed the street and entered the Constantinople.