Lucky Billy (35 page)

Francisco yawned. "Me, I'm soft."

"In Silver City," said the Kid, "I was just a boy, and one time I picked up a scorpion. My mother had married a man named Bill Antrim, and at the time he was still living with us. Don't move, he says. Hold out your hand, keep it out from your body, don't drop it, now. Give it to me, he says, be careful, go slow, don't get scared, don't drop it. Drop it in my hand, he says. No, he says, don't. I just stood there like a statue. Finally I saw a pair of scissors on the table and snipped off its tail. My stepfather says to my mother, 'He's hard. Some folks are just meant to be hard.'"

"Don't sound like he was one of them."

"She didn't want to hear it. She takes me by the ear and pulls my face against her breasts."

"Mothers," said Francisco.

They stared at the fire. Its smoke rose into the sky, underlit by the flames, and would never stop rising, like a heaven-bound soul, Billy thought. "What kind of fire is this, Francisco?"

"What do you mean?"

"A redskin fire?"

"It's better than that, it's a Mexican fire. White man makes a bonfire and burns up everything at once. You can't even get close enough to warm yourself good. Indian puts the ends of the logs together in the flames and pushes them in so they gradually burn. Mexican fire's in between—it's the best."

Billy stirred the fire with a stick. "What did you mean about Juan Roibal?"

"What about Juan?"

"You said he's no friend of mine."

"You said yourself he's in touch with Garrett."

"Have you heard that too?"

"Out here in the desert?"

"So what did you mean?"

"I didn't mean nothing."

"Was it him that betrayed me?"

Francisco looked away. Burst of sparks from a log. "Juan would never do that."

Billy looked at Francisco. "At least it wasn't you."

***

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER
back at Fort Sumner, the Kid was on a bench outside Beaver Smith's saloon when he spotted Francisco across the parade grounds walking into Hargrove's. So he'd brought in his sheep. But had he seen Billy? He wasn't alone, either, someone was with him: short and squat Juan Roibal, who also disappeared inside.

It was five o'clock, the hottest part of the day, and well into July, and Billy felt strange. A gluey taste filled his mouth. I've changed, he thought. I'm not seeing red. Everything is different now, nothing's the same. He'd been talking with his friend Jesús Silva, recounting the story of his escape for the hundredth time, and he felt like a pest. Was it true, as someone had complained, that he'd tell it at the drop of a hat to anyone who'd listen? Had he become one of those? You're just a swell-head, Kid. He cut the story short. He wasn't sure that was Juan entering Hargrove's, Juan lived in Puerto de Luna, he knew. A huge wing of fear all at once brushed his heart, it came out of nowhere. To resist dark suspicions had never been that difficult, though sometimes it was like nailing rats in a box. It took willful indifference, the stiff-necked conviction that what other folks intended was no concern of his and all he had to do was hold up his end. But this time around he couldn't stop it, he
felt
it—the wing of a bird as large as a dragon. The creature sank inside his body, picked the marrow from his bones. His heart flew around and he felt for the butt of his pistol like a boy feeling for his pud, to make sure it was there. Then the fear took off like a raven from a corpse and once again he was fine. But he still felt suspicious. Jesús beside him, anyone on the parade grounds, the men at Hargrove's, he mistrusted them all. He didn't care; let them plot. He'd always been able to look himself in the mirror without turning away. I can sleep at night, can't I? It's no concern of mine if Juan and Francisco go places together, they've always been friends. The world can go to hell. I'm not what I am. Sometimes you might as well just ditch your own past. What people like about me is my lack of hesitation—he's quick, that boy. If he feels like shooting something that's what lie does, no questions asked. Laws don't apply to him, trying to catch Billy would be like trying to hold water in your fingers. How easy it would be to kill everyone he meets!

Then he sees, outside Hargrove's, across the parade ground, the man he thought was Juan walking toward the post office, and wonders how he ever made that mistake. He's not even a Mex; it's Barney Mason's cousin.

Jesús had to go now, he stood up and paused. "What you doing tonight, Kid?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You could throw in with me."

He searched his eyes. "That's all right. I'm meeting a friend. I do have a few left."

"Friends, you mean? Everyone here's your friend, Bilito."

But as Jesús walked off, Billy raised his voice. "This place ain't what it used to be, Jesús."

Later that night he whispered to Celsa, "Let's do it again."

"Don't you have to wait?"

"Does it look like I have to wait?"

"You going to have me crying out for help, Bilicito."

"It's me that cries out. That's the way I am."

In the orchard their proceedings disturbed an errant stinkbug caught beneath the blanket. The bug scuttled out with his ass in the air and headed for the brush at the base of a peach tree. Behind him, the blanket smelled of kerosene, but neither Billy nor Celsa, yoked together, noticed. Near the edge of the orchard, sphinx moths gathered nectar from the lemony flowers, larger than bugles, of the sacred datura. A datura beetle poisoned himself by gorging on the plant's delicious stems and leaves. A three-quarter moon bathed the branches of the peach trees, splashed the earth, flecked their blanket. They heard horses on the road. "Who's that?" whispered Celsa.

"Someone headed for the
baile.
"

"There's no
baile
tonight."

"Someone going home, then." Talking, he knew, was a living demonstration of their separate existence, but that only sharpened the sensation of being joined, one flesh.

"El Chivato!"

Celsa reached down and tried to tug up their blanket.

"Who is it?"

"That redhead."

"Bang! Bang!"

"Bang yourself, pardie. Vamoose.
¡Fuera!
" Billy shifted his weight to his left arm, found a rock in the dark, and threw it at the shadow over near the fence. It didn't move. He grabbed a fistful of rocks and threw them hard, but it was Celsa who yelped when the thrust drove him in. At last the shadow vanished.

They picked up the pace. Celsa hummed with each stroke. She whispered in his ear, "Everyone wants to be El Chivato."

"Not me."

Later, on his back, with Celsa's damp length buttered against him, Billy asked Celsa, "Has Apolinaria said anything about Garrett?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe you could find out."

"She's in Roswell, not here. I never see her."

"You could write. Don't you sisters write all the time?"

She shrugged. "You shouldn't ask me such things."

"Why not?" He grabbed her arm, tried looking in her eyes—she kept turning away.

"You're hurting me," she said.

He felt badly used but what could he do? His heart wasn't in it, he regretted even asking. He said, "I'm starved," and jumped to his feet but his knees buckled. He stamped the sleeping leg to shake out the needles.

"I got some boiled eggs back at my place. Nobody's there."

"I'll go get them."

"Take my knife in the drawer. There's a quarter section on Pete's porch."

"I'll get some of that, too."

T
HE PAPERS MAY CALL
me an atheist, John, but my thoughts on the matter are more of a whipsaw. You can be sure that if we kill or capture the Kid I won't be an atheist, I'll be a hero. And so will you." We were north of Roswell on the Sumner Road at dusk, myself and my deputies, John Poe and Kip McKinney. Those in the know claimed the Kid was back at Sumner. He'd haunted Fort Sumner for the better part of June, or so said my informant, staying with Celsa Gutiérrez when her husband, Saval, was out herding sheep, and racking out when Saval returned. Now he was there even with Saval around, for they were old friends and had learned to share; or so claimed the informant. It seemed incredible to me that Billy Bonney should linger in the territory. There was a great deal of talk about the Kid that didn't go, and folks gave statements without vouching for them, and I scarcely wished for the public to have a laugh on me if I showed up at Sumner and he wasn't there. People saw him everywhere. He was the theme of every tongue. The fact of men answering to his description, with
carabinas
strapped on their backs, and on horses like his, riding into town and acting suspicious and talking to persons known as partisans of the Kid, only multiplied his feats, for the bed is longer than the man that stretches on it. I've fellowshipped several Billy the Kids and observed that Kid Antrim was the one that prevailed. He's the one we were after.

Dust from the horses. New Mexico dust, I believe, keeps me healthy, they ought to bag it for lungers. In several directions, saddle-shaped thunderheads in the twilight's white sky shook off black curtains, but all was dry around us.

On my right, John Foe was a monster. A barrel of beef. He could spear you with those minatory eyes under beetling brows set atop a nose as wide and thick as my hand. To my left, McKinney was more rabbity, lean. He was either sneaky or callow, I couldn't tell. Of all things, he wore a New York bowler hat and his bushy eyes beneath it caught every grain of dust. "What do you mean, whipsaw?" asked Poe.

"I mean it goes back and forth. I'm not a decider. I believe in God sometimes but I also believe he's a horse's ass. Consider this man, Billy the Kid. He's been known to kill persons just to keep his hand in. What kind of god would make something like that?"

"I thought you used to be friends."

"We knew each other briefly."

"I heard you once rode to the door of a church and made your horse kneel just to rile up the flock."

"To amuse the children, John. I wanted to see if a horse could pray, too."

McKinney asked, "How long do you intend to ride tonight?"

"Long enough not to be seen. We can bed down across the river at dawn. Away from the road."

"Tell me again how much we get for this."

"The reward is five hundred dollars," I said.

"He's lost value," said Kip. "It was a thousand the first time."

"It was never a thousand."

"I'm a washed-in-the-blood-of-the-lamber myself," John Poe announced. "I shouldn't be partnering with the likes of you."

"Well, I'm an anythingarian, you can partner with me."

"Do you ever go to church?"

"I have my own church. Church of the Disappointed."

"Is that hard-shell or soft-shell?"

"Hard as to creed, soft as to ways of the world. I live among people of unclean lips, so mine are unclean, too."

"Are you referring to me?"

"I'll tell you how I started up this church, John. My uncle came from Ohio. He told me a story about his church, which was the Millerites."

"Ah," said Poe. "'Behold, the bridegroom cometh.'"

"You know about the Millerites? Then you know that the bridegroom never cameth. My uncle was a child, ten years old. It was 1843, the last year of time. His mother was a follower of William Miller, who had studied the Bible and footed up the numbers based on all the prophecies, especial those in Daniel and Revelations. Father Miller concluded that on the twenty-third of April, 1843, Christ would come in the glory of the Lord, with clouds at his feet and surrounded by angels, and raise the body of his dead saints, and change the bodies of the living, and both would be caught up to meet him in the air. Meanwhile, down below, the works of man would be destroyed. Fire would consume the earth, the bodies of the wicked be burned to ashes, and Satan and his fallen angels be cast into a bottomless pit and shut up with a seal set upon it, that he should not deceive the nations until a thousand years had passed. And after that he'd be loosed a little season."

"Quite a die-up," said Poe.

"And as we plunged into eternity, we'd all laugh the holy laugh and dance the holy dance, said my uncle. He told me all this in Louisiana when he come to stay with us. At the time he was a child, his family lived in Indiana with a clutch of Millerites. He remembered the fervor of their preparation. To a boy of ten, who never knew better, all this was a certainty, he said, it was as normal as pie. Besides, preparation was more or less a vacation. Since the world was going to end,
people sold their farms or just stopped working them. Laborers quit their jobs. Preachers told their flocks to sell all their property and scatter the proceeds. He heard tell of a grocer that burned all his goods, refusing to even save any for his family. No need for food. One task that made sense to my uncle, and to me when he told it, was to find a high hill so the Lord wouldn't miss you down there on the earth raising up your hands, crying, 'Me! Me next!' There was one a half-mile from their iron-dirt farm with a grassy slope on top. The thing of it was, when the day come, my uncle hadn't changed; he was still a child. He and the other children run around and played prisoner's base and pulled each other's hair and the boys spit at one another—the usual. Anyway, as you know, the world did not end—unless this life we live now is a dream. Night fell, it got cold, and they all drifted home a few folks at a time, all disappointed. But the preachers were not to be buffaloed that easy. They reformed their calculations. Uh-oh, they said, we forgot a few months, and when they toted it up a new date was announced: October twenty-first, 1844. By then, my uncle's family had moved to Ohio. One woman in Ohio murdered all five of her children to give them a head start and that did give my uncle's people pause, but most folks dismissed it and shook their smiling heads. My uncle said the believers were all drunk on hope. They couldn't see straight. He himself was a year older now and fed a little more off the grown people's range. This was to be the great year of jubilees, when all the bondsmen of the world shall be set free. October came. Same preparations, same search for a hill, same orgy of giveaways and quitting of jobs and mad frenzies of conviction. Wild-eyed men running around, acting like children themselves, said my uncle. Comes October twenty-first. Same climb up a hill, this time in the rain, but when the clouds part a great cry goes up. The sun emerges from the clouds! People laugh and cry, start to hugging each other! Children on their daddies' shoulders. But the shoulders get tired. Same long wait, same fatigue, same sinking of the heart when twilight is over and night has fallen. Same sagging walk home after midnight. Same scoffers taunting my uncle and his people, same gangs of toughs throwing eggs at their house.