"Ma'am?"
She came closer.
"Johnny, don't you know me?"
Suddenly he did. It was her voice. Only her voice was the same.
"Serepta!"
"Yes! Yes!"
She ran to him. He did not rise but lifted both arms and spread them to receive her, and she dropped beside him while he took her in his arms and pulled her close and pressed his face to her hair and they laughed together, softly, and murmured to each other until he held her away so that he could look at her again. There were tears in his eyes.
"My God, I'm glad to have you here, Ser! I thought nobody I ever knew would come see me!"
"Oh, Johnny dear!" She leaned to kiss him on the mouth. "I came as soon as I heard!"
"Here. Sit up here, on the bed, near me."
He helped her. They smiled at each other, and she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "Have I changed so much, Johnny?"
"No. You have not. It has been so damned long, that's all."
"Eleven years."
But he had lied to her, gallantly. She was blowsy now, a blowsy, irrevocable thirty-nine. Her face was puffed and lined, and she had slathered on the rouge and powder and plucked her eyebrows into brazen arches. When she removed her bonnet the auburn mane he remembered had been clipped inexpertly to a shag, and rinsed with henna. He was sure he could not have changed as radically. Love had been her life eleven years ago, to give and to take. La, la, la, she had sung beneath him, a song as lovely as that of a mockingbird enraptured by snow. Now her concerns were probably spider webs at the corners of her eyes, a touch of arthritis on a rainy day, perhaps a bunion. His heart reconciled him to this new, this old Serepta Thomas, however, and to the treachery the years had done her. She was here, that was what counted, when he needed her, and he was grateful. He would take today with him to the grave.
"It isn't true, is it? About you?"
"That I have a cancer?"
"Yes."
"God how I loved you, Ser."
"And I loved you. It isn't true."
"It is."
"How long do they give you?"
"Weeks."
"Oh Johnny, no." She turned her head and used her handkerchief again.
"Don't cry, Ser. We all have our time. How did you know?"
"You're famous, and bad news travels fast. I'm living in Tucson now, and the day I heard I got right on the train."
"Good girl."
He took her handkerchief and brushed beneath her eyes. The cloth was frayed, and smelled of fivepenny perfume.
"I must look a sight."
"For sore eyes," he smiled. "Why did you come?"
"Why do you think? To see you again, to be with you. I haven't forgotten, Johnny. I never will."
He took her hands in his. They were chapped. He had lived with her in Tularosa for two years. She had not asked marriage, nor had he offered it, because he was with her one day, gone the next. Then, when he returned one time from Colorado, she had left him for a freighter named Pardee.
"Are you still with Pardee?"
"No. He took off for California last year. Just up and skipped."
"Leaving me for a freighter. There was no future in that. Didn't you know the railroads were coming?"
"Oh, he made good money at first, and he was decent to me. He never carried a gun. Then there was less and less to haul and he started drinking. After that it was the old sad story—I had the same black eye for six months. When it would go to clear up, he'd freshen it."
"Did you have kids?"
"Two. Two girls."
"I'd have given you boys, Ser."
"And a black veil too. I couldn't have stood it, Johnny, watching you go off and worrying were you coming back alive or dead."
"Look how long I lasted."
She shook her head. "I couldn't have stood it. I loved you too much."
"We should have married."
"Spilt milk."
"We should have."
"You never did?"
"No."
"And you're alone. That's just awful. I'm so glad I came."
"So am I." He put her hands to his lips. "Oh God I am."
"Would you still like to?" she asked.
"What?"
"Get married."
"Now?"
"That's something I wanted to talk to you about. Life's bunged me up pretty bad, Johnny. I'm not near forty yet, and no prospects. I had to scrape to buy a train ticket. We could just call in a minister and say 'I do.' I'd have the certificate. I'd have something to go on."
His smile was wry. "Not much. I've sold my horse. I have two guns and a gold watch."
"I'd have your name."
"How far would that take you?"
"A long ways, maybe."
He freed her hands. "How?"
"You're too modest, Johnny. You don't know what a high mogul you are. Shoot, everybody's heard of J. B. Books— everybody talks about you. You're in the papers all the time. And after you're gone, I'd be Mrs. J. B. Books, your widow. I'd be somebody."
"That wouldn't buy you bacon."
"Well, it might." She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. "You see, that's how I heard you were ailing bad. There's a newspaper reporter here in El Paso. He tracked me down someways and wrote me to come see him. So I did, this morning, on my way here. He wants to get out a book on you—you know, your life and killings and such—he'd write it and put my name on it—The Shootist: The Life and Bloody Times of J. B. Books, by Serepta Books, His Wife—he says it would sell back East like a house afire. He'd split with me."
He lay back in his chair, away from her. "His name Dobkins?"
"Yes. How'd you know?"
"I kicked him out of here the other day."
"Why?"
"He wanted to do the same thing with me, only in the newspapers. The yellow-shoe son of a bitch. He's a sticker, though. He won't quit."
They were silent. She was gauging him. After a moment she put on a pout.
"I never did understand you, Johnny," she pouted. "I still don't. What's the harm in it? A wedding certificate—a piece of paper."
"I don't object to that. The book I do."
"Why?"
"How much do you know about my life? How much does Dobkins know?"
"Well, two years I do—what a lover you were. And what all you told me. He said whatever we don't know he'll make up. You know, gory things—shoot-'em-ups and midnight rides and women tearing their hair!" She laughed. "Oh, it'll be a corker, Johnny, I promise!"
His look shut her like a door.
"No," he said. "I will not be remembered for a pack of lies."
She had been sure of him, of the natural advantage of the well over the ill. Now she did not know what way to go, whether to try for his soft side or to indict him for a hard heart. She tossed an emotional coin.
"It cost me three dollars for the train here, Johnny," she said, knotting her handkerchief. "One way."
"I'll buy you a ticket back."
"I gave you two years of my life. Can't you help me now, when I need it? My little girls—"
"Yours and Pardee's, not mine."
"But what's so wrong about a book?"
"I may not have much else, woman, but I still have my pride."
"Shit!" She let her anger go. "Pride. You've done enough harm to others in your life—can't you do a good deed for once?"
"So that's why you came to see me."
"I came because I need help!" she cried. "And you could give it and you won't, you're too damn mule-mean, you always were! Why should you care anyway—you're dying! I have to go on living—but you don't give a damn what becomes of me! Why should you? You won't be here!"
She had gone too far. He was considering her. And though eleven years had passed, she remembered: against that silent, terrible appraisal of his, nothing prevailed, neither tears nor accusation nor a bullet. She was frightened. She flung herself from the bed to the floor, she knelt between his legs, she tried to reclaim him with her arms.
"Oh, Johnny, shame on me! I shouldn't have said that! It's just I'm in such bad straits and so alone!"