I shared my theory that this tooth problem was linked to the spider bite, or else the antivenom, but Watts said there was no medical evidence to support it. He told me, ‘The body is an actual miracle, and who can dissect a miracle? It may have been the spider, true, and it may have been a reaction to the doctor’s so-called antivenom, and it may have been neither one. Really, though, what difference does it make why you’re unwell? Am I right?’
I said I supposed he was. Charlie said, ‘I was telling Eli here, Doc, that I bet there’s a gallon of blood sloshing loose in his head.’
Watts unsheathed a polished silver lance. Sitting back, he regarded my head as a monstrous bust. ‘Let’s find out,’ he said.
Chapter 6
The story of Reginald Watts was a luckless one dealing in every manner of failure and catastrophe, though he spoke of this without bitterness or regret, and in fact seemed to find humor in his numberless missteps: ‘I’ve failed at straight business, I’ve failed at criminal enterprise, I’ve failed at love, I’ve failed at friendship. You name it, I’ve failed at it. Go ahead and name something. Anything at all.’
‘Agriculture,’ I said.
‘I owned a sugar beet farm a hundred miles northeast of here. Never made a penny. Hardly saw one sugar beet. A devastating failure. Name something else.’
‘Shipping.’
‘I bought a share in a paddle-wheel steamboat running goods up and down the Mississippi at an obscene markup. Highly profitable enterprise until I came along. Second trip she made with my money in her, sank to the bottom of the river. She was uninsured, which was my bright idea to save us a few dollars on overhead. Also I had encouraged a name change, from The Periwinkle, which I thought bespoke frivolity, to the Queen Bee. An unmitigated failure. My fellow investors, if I’m not mistaken, were going to lynch me. I pinned a suicide note to my front door and left town in one hell of a shameful hurry. Left a good woman behind, too. Still think of her, these many years later.’ The doctor took a moment and shook his head. ‘Name something else. No, don’t. I’m tired of talking about it.’
‘That’s two of us,’ said Charlie. He was sitting in the corner reading a newspaper.
I said, ‘Looks like you’re making a go of it here, Doc.’
‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘You’re my third customer in three weeks. It would appear that oral hygiene is low on the list of priorities in this part of the world. No, I expect I’ll fail in dentistry, also. Give it another two months on the outside and the bank’ll shut me down.’ He held a long, dripping needle next to my face. ‘This is going to pinch, son.’
‘Ouch!’ I said.
‘Where did you study dentistry?’ Charlie asked.
‘A most reputable institution,’ he answered. But there was a smirk on his lips I did not care for.
‘I understand the course of study takes several years,’ I said.
‘Years?’ said Watts, and he laughed.
‘How long then?’
‘Me personally? Just as long as it took to memorize the nerve chart. As long as it took those fools to ship me the tools on credit.’ I looked over to Charlie, who shrugged and returned to his reading. I reached up to check the swelling of my cheek and was startled to find I had no feeling in my face.
Watts said, ‘Isn’t that something? I could pull every tooth you’ve got and you wouldn’t feel the slightest pain.’
Charlie’s eyes peered over the paper. ‘You really can’t feel anything?’ I shook my head and he asked Watts, ‘How do you get ahold of that?’
‘Can’t, unless you’re in the profession.’
‘Might prove handy, in our line of work. What would you say to selling us some?’
‘They don’t hand it over by the barrel,’ Watts said.
‘We’d give you a fair price.’
‘I’m afraid the answer is no.’
Charlie looked at me blankly; his face disappeared behind the paper.
Watts lanced my face in three different places and the colorful fluids came trickling out. There was some remaining in the head but he said it would go down of its own accord, and that the worst of it was passed. He extracted the two offending teeth and I laughed at the painless violence of it. Charlie became uneasy and retired to the saloon across the road. ‘Coward,’ called Watts. He stitched the hole closed and filled my mouth with cotton, afterward leading me to a marble basin where he showed me a dainty, wooden-handled brush with a rectangular head of gray-white bristles. ‘A toothbrush,’ he said. ‘This will keep your teeth clean and your breath pleasant. Here, watch how I do it.’ The doctor demonstrated the proper use of the tool, then blew mint-smelling air on my face. Now he handed me a new brush, identical to his own, and also a packet of the tooth powder that produced the minty foam, telling me they were mine to keep. I protested this but he admitted he had been sent a complimentary box from the manufacturer. I paid him two dollars for the removal of the teeth and he brought out a bottle of whiskey to toast what he called our mutually beneficial transaction. Altogether I found the man quite charming, and I was remorseful when Charlie reentered the office with his pistol drawn, leveling it at the good doctor. ‘I tried to bargain with you,’ he said, his face flushed with brandy.
‘I wonder what I will fail at next,’ Watts said forlornly.
‘I don’t know, and I don’t care. Eli, gather the numbing medicine and needles. Watts, find me a piece of rope, and quickly. If you get shifty on me I will put a hole in your brain.’
‘At times I feel one is already there.’ To me he said, ‘The pursuit of money and comfort has made me weary. Take care of your teeth, son. Keep a healthy mouth. Your words will only sound that much sweeter, isn’t that right?’
Charlie cuffed Watts on the ear, thus bringing his speech to a close.
Chapter 7
We rode through the afternoon and into the evening, when I became dizzy to the point I thought I might fall from the saddle. I asked Charlie if we could stop for the night and he agreed to this, but only if we should find a sheltered place to camp, as it was threatening to rain. He smelled a fire on the air and we traced it to a one-room shack, wispy cotton-smoke spinning from its chimney, a low light dancing in the lone window. An old woman wrapped in quilting and rags answered the door. She had long gray hairs quivering from her chin and her half-opened mouth was filled with jagged, blackened teeth. Charlie, crushing his hat in his hand, spoke of our recent hardships in a stage actor’s dramatic timbre. The woman’s oyster-flesh eyes fell on me and I grew instantly colder. She walked away from the door without a word. I heard the scrape of a chair on the floor. Charlie turned to me and asked, ‘What do you think?’
‘Let’s keep on.’
‘She’s left the door open for us.’