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 souclass="underline" "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.