Doc

It was hard for Dong-Sing to keep in mind what his father would understand. It was difficult even to remember what his father looked like. Children who were babies when Dong-Sing left Kwantung must be grown by now—married, with children of their own. Dong-Sing himself had noticed some gray hairs recently and realized that he was getting old. He had waited a long time for a bride, but his family never sent one, and now it was illegal to bring Chinese women into America.

I fear I will never have sons, he wrote to his father when the law was passed, in ’75. All the Chinese in Kansas are men. I will be no one’s ancestor.

The only women in Dodge who would have Dong-Sing were whores who worked in the cribs behind the saloons. Even black ones charged him a lot, and they all did extra things to ensure that they would not have a yellow baby.

Whatever you worship will consume you, Dong-Sing wrote one week. Bob Wright worships money. Wyatt Earp worships justice. Eddie Foy worships applause. Doc worships home and family, as I do. How will this consume us?

In China, family was everything. In America, most people were all by themselves and liked it that way. Doc was alone, but he cared about his cousins and aunts and uncles. Without them he was almost as lonely as Dong- Sing himself. So Doc adopted friends to be his family. Dong-Sing understood that, of course. Just last year, he had adopted his nephew Shai-Kwan and set him up in business in Wichita to ensure that someone would light a joss stick for Jau Dong-Sing when he was gone, and sweep his grave on Ching-Ming Day. What puzzled Dong-Sing was why Doc chose such low-class people to be his friends, instead of cultivating influential or well-connected persons.

Sometimes Doc walked out to the cemetery to stand alone at the grave of Johnnie Sanders and clean it up a little. This was unwise, for the nigger boy’s life was one of misfortune and bad luck. His spirit could only be malevolent.

I have warned Doc about the danger, but he does not believe that an uneasy spirit can make a person sick. To Dong-Sing, the truth was there to be read in the stained handkerchiefs and the sour smell of Doc’s shirts and bedsheets. Belle Wright goes out to that grave, too, Dong-Sing noted. She has started to cough sometimes, just like Doc. I liked Johnnie Sanders when he was alive, but his spirit is angry and dangerous.

Maybe he is bringing bad luck to Wyatt Earp, too, Dong-Sing thought.

That would explain a lot.

* * *

Wyatt wasn’t really sure how he and Mattie wound up living together. After she worked off her debt, she told him that she’d have to go back to the street. He was sorry for her, but that didn’t mean he wanted her to stay with him.

Trouble was, when Lou and Morg moved to their own place next door, Wyatt was alone in the house and didn’t have that excuse anymore.

“Mattie,” he said, feeling awful about it, “I don’t even have a dog.”

“You could have one now, Wyatt. I could take care of it,” Mattie told him. “I could take care of you. I can clean, and I know how to cook. You wouldn’t have to eat at restaurants all the time. You could have home cooking.”

He didn’t want a dog. And he liked eating in restaurants. He liked that the waitresses knew what he wanted and brought it to the table without him asking. He liked staring out the window while he ate, keeping an eye on things while the people around him made conversation. He enjoyed the way Morg and Doc teased each other like brothers when Doc was feeling good. When they talked about what they read in books, he liked to listen without the need to say anything.

He liked being alone in crowds. He liked keeping watch, walking the beat, knowing what was buttoned up and where trouble was brewing. He liked the last hour of the night, when the drunks had passed out and the card games were over and the sun was coming up. He liked how the feel of the city changed. The south side, sleeping its night off. The north side, waking up to open its shops and stores.

On duty, he held himself responsible to every citizen of Dodge and gave their town his whole attention. Minute by minute, all night long, he was alert—as ready as Dick was, waiting for the starter’s gun. When his shift was over, he felt he’d earned the sense of belonging only to himself.

For a few days after Morg and Lou moved, he lived alone and liked it. When he opened the door to the tiny rented house, he liked the silence inside. He liked that everything he owned—little as it was—was right where he left it. He liked the way he could pick up the threads of his simple life and ease back into unobserved solitude. He liked going to bed without having spoken a word to anyone, and he liked to sleep, dreamlessly, alone.

He hated how everyone noticed now when he got off work. He hated the leering, the joshing. “How’s married life?” everybody asked. He’d answer, “Well, it ain’t all bad,” and that’s exactly what he meant, but there’d be more laughs, as if he’d told a joke. He hated that everybody was paying attention to him.

When he got home, there’d be a meal on the table and Mattie would be waiting for him, watching his face with those big sad eyes, like a dog expecting to get kicked but helpless to leave its master. If he was late, she’d blame him for making her worry and complained about how the meal was spoiled, though he really didn’t notice that the food was worse.

She wasn’t a terrible cook, but she made him stuff he didn’t much like, and it hurt her feelings if he didn’t eat it all. Her coffee was awful and he started putting milk in it, on top of the sugar, to kill the taste some. If they went out, he had to remember to put milk in his coffee then, too, so she wouldn’t know he didn’t like hers. She kept the little house tidy, but he could never find anything anymore. When he asked where something was, she seemed annoyed and acted like he’d criticized her.

She was trying her best. He could see that, and he wanted to appreciate what she did. But he didn’t, not really. That was the damnable misery of it: he didn’t want what she had to give. It was a sadness to him, seeing how hard she tried to please him, because what would have pleased him most was if she just wasn’t there.

One time, over breakfast in the Iowa House before the night shift began, Wyatt talked all this over with Doc. He thought the dentist would understand how one thing led to another, and there you were, waking up beside a woman you never would’ve chosen.

“Could you get rid of Kate? If you really—?” Doc just looked at him, and Wyatt felt ashamed, but he needed to know. “I mean, this ain’t anything I wanted, Doc! But I can’t—I don’t know …”

“You can’t be mean enough to throw her into the street?” Doc paused to stir honey into his tea. “Alas, poor Dido, who tried to seize with living love a heart long numbed to passion.”

Wyatt guessed that was some kind of poetry and ignored it, same as he ignored Doc’s coughing. “You get used to it,” Doc had said about the cough. “You can get used to anything.” Including not understanding half of what Doc said.

“But Kate—she’s still working,” Wyatt whispered, even though they were alone at a long wooden table. “How do you—? I mean, any man you pass on the street might’ve …”

“Ah,” Doc said, lifting the cup and blowing on the tea through a slight crooked smile. “So, we are discussin’ male pride now, not female virtue.”

“You know what I mean,” Wyatt said irritably. “Why are you with her, Doc?”

“Wrong question,” Doc said, coughing briefly.

“Well, what’s the right one then?”

“Why is she with me?”

“Is that a joke?” Wyatt could never tell.

“You are not the only one with a ghost life, Wyatt.”

For a time, holding the teacup in both hands, Doc looked out at the little stretch of Front Street visible through the restaurant window. “It’s a fairy tale in reverse,” he decided. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was raised at the imperial court of Maximilian of Mexico, surrounded by luxury and refinement. When she grew up, she was meant to become the cultured and decorative wife of a fine gentleman. A count, perhaps. Or a prince. She would have servants to supervise and a household to oversee, and children to rear in a home filled with books and art. That is the life Kate might have had, Wyatt.”