The hoorah had begun before midnight, about the same time the police force was rather belatedly informed that gunfire within town limits was legal on the Fourth. Wyatt was furious when he found out. Public order would be set back by a good three weeks. There was, however, nothing he could do about it, apart from insisting that his men stay on duty for the next thirty-six hours to keep anarchy at bay.
All night long, Texas visitors to Dodge took full advantage of their temporary immunity from prosecution, shooting out lights and breaking windows. They seemed evenly divided regarding the 102nd birthday of the Union so recently preserved at the cost of so many lives and such destruction. About half viewed the Glorious Fourth as an occasion for sullen, resentful drinking followed by fistfights; the rest considered it a good excuse to get loaded and look for someone to beat up. Tired of the gladiatorial drunkenness, Doc had cashed out of an uninteresting game and gone to bed, where he had remained wide awake ever since.
Even without the noise outside, sleep would have eluded him, for Wyatt would be starting treatment soon.
This was the part of dentistry that John Henry Holliday liked most. Planning procedures step by step. Rehearsing the entire session in his mind, moment by moment, to minimize the time a patient spent under ether. By nature, he was inclined to begin with the most difficult aspect of any work so he could truthfully promise his patient, “Today was the worst. It’ll be easier from now on.” When he had a full practice back in Atlanta, however, he discovered that it was good policy to inquire into the patient’s own preference in the matter.
“If there is good news and bad news,” he’d ask, “which would you rather hear first?”
“Bad,” Wyatt had answered, without hesitation. “Get it over.”
So Doc would begin on the right side of the mandibular arch, which was seriously degraded. Start with the extraction. Once that hopeless molar was pulled, excavate the decay in the occlusal surfaces of the other two, drilling to find clean dentin. He preferred to use gold foil for the fillings, but that was like working with flakes of ash; his cough being what it was, the best technique was beyond him now. Silver amalgam would be good enough.
Most dentists would have pulled those bad bicuspids without hesitation; the interproximal surfaces were severely hourglassed. On the other hand, the gingival bone seemed to be intact. He hated to give up on firmly rooted dentition, but he just couldn’t see a way to save those two …
Just past noon, when he was nearly asleep at last, the solution came to him. Suddenly and fully awake, he sat up, coughed for a while, threw on a shirt and trousers, and hurried downstairs to No. 24. There he composed a detailed outline of a novel dental procedure that would involve yoking the bicuspids together with a gold collar, for structural strength, to be combined with a variation on a cantilevered pontic. He added two diagrams—occlusal and lingual—to illustrate the idea, then rolled himself a cigarette and settled back to review what he had written, making several changes to clarify the description.
If the procedure worked as he anticipated, he decided, he would submit an article to
Wyatt’s case had presented a variety of interesting clinical challenges, but the real satisfaction would come a few days after the patient’s final session. With his gums healing and the trauma behind him, Wyatt would begin to realize how much his teeth had bothered him all his life, how much pain he’d come to accept as normal. He’d eat better, feel better than he had in years. He’d also be able to say more than a few words in a row without thinking of his missing teeth. Occasionally those few words might be addressed to someone with dental trouble: “Go see Doc Holliday.”
By all accounts, Wyatt Earp was as honest a lawman as you could find in Kansas—admittedly, not a high bar to clear. Still, if he told people that Doc Holliday was good at his job, it would count for a lot. And that was as close to advertising as a dentist could come, for the A.D.A. prohibited anything beyond the simple announcement of the opening of his office. He had no legitimate competitors in the region, but like all credentialed dental surgeons, he was up against charlatans who roamed the countryside in colorfully decorated wagons emblazoned with signs that proclaimed the driver to be a “Painless Dentist.”
These shameless frauds were—in all fairness to them—vicious, destructive scoundrels, and John Henry Holliday hated them, individually and as a class, with a pure and unwavering flame.
They would drive into town and attract a crowd with a drummer’s patter, offering to demonstrate their skill by extracting a tooth free of charge for the first person brave enough to volunteer. An accomplice—usually a woman—would act frightened and hesitant but come forward complaining of toothache. In a snap and with a flourish, a horse molar would be held aloft, like the rabbit pulled from a magician’s hat. Proclaiming herself completely free of discomfort of any kind, the woman would urge others to approach and pay in advance to have their teeth ripped out with pliers. Howling victims were ridiculed. “Why, what a big baby you are! That little lady didn’t make a peep!” Half an hour later, the butcher and his girlfriend would leave town before the infections set in, the patients died, and their survivors developed a lifelong horror of dentistry.
It was truly remarkable that Wyatt had decided to go all in. Aside from the expense and the anxiety of extensive dental work, there was the plain trust required to believe that a dentist wouldn’t recommend procedures simply to jack up his fees. In Wyatt’s case, it was easier to list the teeth that
“Why ain’t you in bed?”
He looked up.
Kate was standing in the office doorway, small fists on her hips, ready to do battle. “You said you was tired. You said you was going to bed.”
“No …” Doc said slowly. “I
She stalked in and put her hand on his forehead. “You’re hot,” she told him.
“It’s July, darlin’.”
“You look like shit.”
“Miss Kate, I declare!” he cried, fluttering his eyelashes. “You are such a flirt!”
“China Joe took in seams again,” she said, daring him to deny it.
“Jau Dong-Sing is a reprehensible gossip,” he muttered, lowering his eyes to the papers on his desk, “and I shall speak to him about—”
“You’re losing weight—I can feel it! I don’t need no goddam Chinaman to tell me that. We lost money last night. Your game’s off,” she told him. She dug a hand into her purse and held up ninety dollars. “Do you understand how hard I work to make this much?”
“I have
“No, but you keep eating—”
“Not much, I don’t.”
“Goddammit, Doc! One of us has to have some business sense, or we’ll both be out in the street!”
He sat back in his chair, arms folded across his chest: a tall, thin, offended version of her small, round, furious self.
“What’s the best a dentist can make in a year?” she demanded. “In a real city, with a big practice! Sixteen hundred? Two grand? Doc, you can win that in an
“Darlin’, if my income is insufficient to satisfy you, you are free to depart at your earliest convenience!”
“Damn you, I don’t want to leave! I just want to understand why in hell you bother with this!”
“
“Yes! Why?” She grabbed the papers on his desk and waved the crumpled notes at the chair, and the drill, and the cabinet of instruments. “This office, all this equipment—it ain’t never going to pay! Why do you keep spending money and trying to be a goddam dentist when you could—”
“Because,” he said, astonished that he had to say it, “I can relieve sufferin’.”
She stared at him, mouth open.
He stared back, dumbfounded by her surprise.
“Kate … People die in
