Doc: A Novel (34 page)

“And the hundredth boy?” Doc asked Wyatt.

“We can go either way. Kill the old man, or try to become a better one.” Wyatt dropped the curtain. “You ready for me?”

“Just about,” Doc said. “Have a seat.”

“A very natural appearance.” That’s what Dr. J. H. Holliday had promised, and that’s what he delivered.

It was just as well that neither Wyatt nor Morgan inquired about the provenance of the teeth themselves, for Wyatt’s new ones were among the hundreds of thousands collected from battlegrounds, sorted by type and size, and made available for restorative dentistry for many years after the war. With John Henry’s sketches and detailed measurements to go by, his cousin Robert had found a pair of upper centrals that matched Morgan’s closely.

“It’ll feel strange for a while,” Doc warned, making the final adjustment, “but a couple of days from now, you’ll think they were never missin’. You still need to be careful when you eat. Don’t bite into apples. Slice them up like you’ve been doin’. And don’t take up smokin’ a pipe. Too much torque’ll deform the mount … And if somebody’s likely to hit you in the mouth—”

“Right! I’ll be careful! Can I look now?”

“Not yet. Say ‘Mississippi.’ ”

“Mithithi—Oh,
hell
, no!” Wyatt cried, sitting up in the chair. “Doc, thith—”

“Hush, now,” Doc said. “Morgan, you laugh, and I will slap you flat. It’s goin’ to take some practice, Wyatt. Don’t let the tip of your tongue touch the teeth. Bring it down and back, just a hair. Try it again.”

“Mizzith—Hell! Mizziss—”

“Damn your eyes, Morgan!” Doc wheeled, coughing, and pointed to the door. “Go wait in the lobby!”

Chastened but still grinning, Morgan left the room, though he stayed in the hallway to listen, out of sight.

“Pay that pup no mind, Wyatt,” Doc was saying. “Try again. Just the tip of the tongue … Curl the tip back a little. There you go! Yes! You’re already doin’ better.”

This went on for about ten minutes, with time out for Doc’s cough. When Wyatt was getting it right about half the time and seemed confident that he’d get the hang of it, Doc told him, “Now try ‘fifty-five.’ Bring your lower lip up to the teeth. Just rest the lip against them … Again. Good. Yes! Better! That one’s easier, isn’t it … Now try ‘very vivid.’ It’s the same movement but voiced. Put your hand on your throat. Feel the vibration?”

“You should be in bed,” Wyatt told Doc, who was coughing again.

There was a clink of glass on glass. Doc must have been pouring himself another drink. The desk chair scraped back.

“Not yet,” Doc said, sounding breathless but serene. “Take a look.”

Morg moved closer and peered in through the crack between the door and its frame. For a while Wyatt sat still, and Morgan found himself thinking, Poor soul—like Doc always said—poor soul, he can walk straight into a mob, but this …

It was about then that his own vision blurred, but Morg could hear the barber chair creak and footsteps as Wyatt got up and went to the mirror.

Blinking hard, Morgan wiped his eyes and tried to remember if he’d ever seen Wyatt look—really
look
—at himself that way. There was a small, embarrassed smile, and then a broader one …

In the past weeks, while Doc worked toward this moment, Morgan had often thought about how relieved and glad he’d be to see his brother made whole again. Now the moment had come at last, but it wasn’t how he thought it would be. Instead of happiness, he felt a great weight of something like grief pressing on him. Sadness for all the years Wyatt’s smile was gone. Anger, too, remembering how Nicholas Earp had tried to make cowards of all his sons.

It came to Morgan that Nicholas must have been a beaten boy, too, and that meant Grampa Earp was, as well. Which was no surprise, really, when Morg thought about that mean old man. How many sons were in that chain? Morgan wondered, and grief gave way to the pride he’d felt the day his brother Wyatt stood up to his first bully and put an end to a chain of vengeful, frightened, beaten boys.

Wyatt turned from the mirror. “Doc, I don’t know what to th—I don’t know what to say.”

“Sure, you do, Wyatt: Mississippi. Fifty-five.”

Morgan shifted so he could see Doc, whose eyes were filled with pleasure and satisfaction and … love, almost. All mixed.

“Go on, now,” the dentist said softly. “Take a ride on that fine horse of yours, Wyatt, out where no one can see or listen. Practice makes perfect, y’hear?”

The men he worked with didn’t notice. If anyone had asked Chuck Trask or John Stauber, for example, they might have said Wyatt was quieter than usual the next few days, or that Dick Naylor was getting an awful lot of exercise.

Women saw a difference. He seemed a little less flinty and remote, and they were glad to see him loosen a bit. Morgan’s girl, Lou, told Wyatt that he looked real nice. And Mattie didn’t complain when he left her alone to go out riding and work on his words. Bessie said it was money well spent and didn’t give Wyatt a hard time about how he should have paid her and James back first. Kate seemed prickly about it, but even she admitted that Doc had done a remarkable job.

Mabel Riney asked straight out, “What’s changed, Wyatt?” Her husband, John, was sleeping off a drunk, and she was working the tollbooth while Wyatt waited around for a cattle company due to come across the river. “Something’s different,” she said, “but I can’t make out what.”

“Got my teeth fixed,” he told her.

“Lemme see,” Mabel said, like he was one of her sons.

He smiled, sort of, but looked away, coloring up like a boy. It was sweet, how shy he was about telling her.

“Doc Holliday done that?” she asked, impressed.

He nodded.

“How much he charge?” she asked, and whistled when he told her.

“It was a lot,” Wyatt agreed, “but my teeth always used to hurt. Not anymore.”

They passed the time awhile, Mabel asking things and Wyatt answering. He told her a lot about ether, which was horrible and made you think you were smothering, but then you didn’t feel it when teeth were pulled or drilled, and you just had to eat soft things afterward while you healed up.

When the cowboys got to the bridge, Wyatt was all business again. Mabel took the tolls, same as usual, but started thinking about going to see the dentist herself, because she had some teeth that had been bothering her for years.

Which was why, even without an advertisement in the
Ford County Globe
or the
Dodge City Times
, Doc Holliday’s business picked up quite a bit that summer. Word got around because women talk.

Eventually even Mrs. George Hoover overheard about Wyatt’s teeth, though no one told her directly. Few Dodge Citians spoke to Mrs. Hoover, not even other Methodists. Whores envied and resented her. Men who’d fucked little Maggie Carnahan—before Jesus saved her and Big George married her—didn’t hardly know how to act around her. And certainly, no Democrat would give Margaret Hoover the time of day.

She was used to her isolation and took a bit of pride in that evidence of her higher calling and strength of character. She had come a long way since drifting on the sea of sin and liquor that had once carried her so far from the Lord. She found it difficult to remember New York these days. She was such a greenhorn then! So foreign, so trusting.

And so much of her previous life seemed nightmarish to her, lived as it was in moonlight and in shadow.

“How old are you?” the Old Mister asked when she first came to work with her cousin.

“Thirteen, sir,” she said, dropping a curtsy, just as she’d been taught.

“Old enough for a lover,” he said. Then he cackled at her confusion.

He liked to watch while she dusted or polished or swept. In long, empty hallways and silent rooms, he would stand half-hidden in doorways, a small smile on his withered old lips.

He thought it was great fun to startle her, to make her jump. Wary, she learned to notice the musty old-man odor of stale, sweaty woolens, and cigarette smoke, and booze, and piss. Trying not to shudder, she would call out, “Morning to you, sir,” just to let him know she wasn’t fooled.

Sometimes he would speak in low, hushed, secret tones that she almost didn’t understand—so new she was from the old country, so unfamiliar with the speech of Americans. When she could make out the words, what he said made no sense.

“When you live with me, I will love you and punish you,” the Old Mister mumbled one quiet afternoon. “I will kidnap you, and you will give yourself up to me, and you will wear no clothing while you scrub floors, but I will feed you sweets … Here. Drink this. Go on. It’s only a little.”

Repulsed. Intrigued. Frightened. Intoxicated. Maggie hardly knew what she felt, except she wished she’d never left Belfast. She was so lonely, and the Old Mister was the only one who seemed to like her, and she liked the liquor. Sweet port, it was. Warming in the cold damp winter. So warming that it was possible to ignore an old man’s cold, bony hands.

“Any port in a storm,” Old Mister would mumble. Then he’d giggle, like he’d made a joke.

Young Missus could see what was going on between her father-in-law and the new maid, and she despised Maggie for it. “You are a wicked girl,” she whispered fiercely. “You’ll be punished for what you’re doing with him.” Young Missus could slap her and make Maggie’s life a trial, but she couldn’t fire her. Only the Old Mister could do that. He held the purse strings and ruled the house, and it was he who led young Maggie Carnahan to walk in lasciviousness, lusts, and excesses of wine—

All that was behind her now. Maggie Carnahan was dead. A clean new soul had risen in her place, rejoicing in Jesus. Mrs. George Hoover was a teetotal Methodist, the wife of a good man, and a rich woman—No! Better than a rich woman. She was a
lady
.

At the end of July, Margaret Hoover overheard talk about Wyatt Earp and the new dentist’s work. She began to pay attention to the deputy’s demeanor when she saw him at church on Sunday. It’s time he did more for temperance than pray, she decided, and that afternoon she urged her husband to approach Wyatt about the convention in August.

Big George was surprised that Margaret had thought of such a thing and was inclined to dismiss the notion, but his little wife could be remarkably insistent. Before long she had convinced him that this was a good opportunity to involve Wyatt in politics. In fact, George became so certain of the wisdom of the plan, he invited Nick Klaine along when he went to see Wyatt at the Iowa House. Which meant the newspaperman was right there taking notes for the
Dodge City Times
when the offer was made.

“Wyatt, I know you’re on duty in a few minutes, so I’ll get straight to the point,” George started out, after saying “Afternoon” to Doc Holliday and Morgan. “The Republican Party needs men like you. You’re respected, you’re honest, and you can’t be intimidated by the saloon interests. We’d like you to act as the Ford County representative to the party’s state convention next month. This could be the year that Prohibition gets onto the Kansas platform. Yours could be the vote that puts it over the top. Now, the convention lasts two weeks, but we can get you the time off, and we’ll cover your lost wages and expenses. What do you say?”

Wyatt didn’t say anything at all. George’s earnest smile remained unaltered, although the effort to maintain its confident brightness became somewhat more visible as the seconds ticked by. He glanced at Nick Klaine, whose pencil was poised in anticipation of Wyatt’s answer. “You see, Klaine?” George cried. “This is a momentous decision and this is just the sort of judicious consideration I expected from Wyatt Earp!”

In point of fact, Wyatt was considering the offer carefully, but he was also choosing his words, still avoiding the letter
s
in front of people. “I’ve been dealing faro at the Alhambra, Mr. Hoover.”

“We all do what we have to, to make a living, Wyatt,” George pointed out smoothly, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t work for a better and more moral nation.”

I guess, Wyatt would have said ordinarily. Instead he just shrugged, which made him seem more reluctant than he really was.

“You don’t have to give me an answer right now,” George said, “but representing us at the convention could lead to other things. Just think about the possibilities, is all I’m asking.”

George said good day to them all and left with Nick Klaine. Wyatt looked at Morg, who said, “Why not?”

Doc sighed, and put his head in his hands, and wondered how his life had come to such a pass that he was surrounded by Republicans. “You’ll need a suit,” he warned Wyatt. “You can’t go to Topeka dressed like that.”

The idea of buying new clothes was enough to make Wyatt say, “Oh, hell, then,” and brush the whole idea off.

For the next couple of days, he went about his business, working on his words whenever he was alone, until the sounds came natural. Wasn’t long before he was confident enough to call, “See you on Sunday,” right out loud to the preacher. And he produced a sarcastic but clearly enunciated “Very funny” when Morgan played like he was going to punch him in the mouth at supper one morning.