He sniffed, as if derisive. “She was a beauty. Tall, hair like corn silk, with a face that would have shamed immortal Helen. Hell, I was just back in America for a season before heading back to the mountains. But here was a woman the likes of which I couldn’t turn down. Insisted we be married a’fore she’d let me take her to the blankets.”
“And Grandfather was a lunger,” Butler added, remembering the story. “He’d just sold his farm. Gold that would be Maw’s. Which meant yours. Gold that built the farm.”
Paw shrugged, the action making a mockery of his stumped arm. “You think I ever got my fingers on a coin of that? Your maw was no fool. Then, something changed in her when Philip was born. She wanted more than just the adventure. Demanded roots. I’ll say this for your maw, she kept me on a string.”
He frowned, searching Butler’s eyes, “Why the hell do you think I ran off to Mexico? Robbed that damn church and melted all the gold into bars?”
“You robbed a church?”
“Papists, son. Not fully Christian. And wasn’t nobody around, them Spanish bastards having all scampered off like rats ahead of the yanqui army.”
Butler sighed and glanced sidelong at the men. Did they see his shame? “Did any of us mean anything to you?”
Paw blinked, worked his lips. “You made me feel like a real gentleman. And I appreciated it more than I could tell you. All I had to do was go home, and there was the house, the fields, and your mother and you. All looking prosperous. I could bring anyone I wanted, and for a day I was a lord in his manor. Complete with a beautiful wife, a library, and two boys who weren’t going to be mere farmers.
“I tell you, men were impressed. Even the plantation scions, because unlike Phillips County, this was the backwoods, a plantation and empire in the making.”
“Don’t heah nuthin’ ’bout nuthin’ but yor paw,” Kershaw whispered behind Butler’s ear.
“Makes me wonder why Maw stuck with him,” Butler said for Kershaw’s ears alone.
“Probably warn’t no other way,” Pettigrew told him. “Hell, for all you know, he’d a shot her for throwing him out.”
“Would you?” Butler asked his father.
“Would I what?” Paw asked, confused.
“Have shot Maw if she’d divorced you?”
That seemed to set him back. “Divorced? No. She just figured a man was a man, having been raised by the likes of her own father. Her only interest was in you kids … and making the farm a success. She always gambled that I’d be shot by some jealous husband or lover. A divorced woman gets nothing. A widow gets it all.”
“Why’d you break Philip’s heart, Paw?”
“That Sally Spears he was in love with? I knew her for what she was. She’d set her sights on Philip as her way out of Elkhorn Tavern. The boy didn’t have a chance once she’d grabbed him by the pizzle. I only knew of one way to keep him from marrying her.”
“What would it have hurt?”
“He’d have never become a physician.”
“You made him hate you.”
Paw chuckled weakly. “I needed successful sons more than I needed their love.” He sighed, “And here, in the middle of no place, you show up, a broken lunatic worthy of the asylum.”
“What you needed? That was the only thing?”
“It’s a hard lesson, boy. But if you’d learned it you’d be teaching in some academy or university instead of ending up exiled from civilized society and mumbling to the air.” He closed his eyes, adding, “Just as well I ended up here. You’re a disgrace.”
Butler said nothing, his insides crumbling.
Paw shot him a sidelong glance. “My only regret? Running into that silvertip sow and her cubs on the trail.” He used his ruined left hand to indicate his amputated arm. “I ain’t living like this, Butler. Ain’t gonna be no hobbling, one-armed, three-fingered cripple. Wish you’d a let me die.”
112
May 20, 1868
Maybe it was the weather that brought it on. In the afternoon—on the day Sarah had sold the Angel’s Lair—dark clouds rolled in off the mountains and intiated weeks of off-and-on rain. Denver’s streets, normally foul with trash and fly-filled manure, reminded Doc of the Camp Douglas yard—a liquefied quagmire of filth.
Additionally, there had been no business because of the black wreath he refused to remove from the surgery door. And then, that morning, he discovered that in the night someone had made off with it. Even now it was probably in some drunk’s possession down on Wazee Street, or hung around some corpse’s neck where he lay propped on a tin-can pile behind a Blake Street saloon.
Sitting at his desk chair—where Bridget once had held court—he stared through the wavy glass panes in his window to the drizzle outside. Word was that the constant storms had nearly shut the mountains down. Stories of avalanches and stranded travelers filtered down from the gold camps. The Platte and Cherry Creek were up, and people feared another flood like back in ’64.
Doc stared down into his cold coffee, and found his reflection like a midnight mirror image. All he could see was the outline of his head. No facial features. Just black emptiness where eyes, nose, and mouth should be. Never had he seen such a true reflection of himself. An outline surrounding a stygian void.
Bridget laughed, somewhere, far away, at the edge of his consciousness. Her smile hung wistfully in the distance … an evaporating memory. Her presence seemed like an echo coming from the very room, fading by the instant. When the last of her finally seeped away into infinity, what would be left? So little of her remained here.
At home at night, he took out her dresses, one by one, and laid them on the bed. Lifting them, he would bunch the fabric, place them to his nose, and
