Chapter Seventeen

Safe again. Hot shower clean. Fresh clothes. Noon. Creeping up the side of my building, Dawn fingers her way to my window softly like a swain scratching a lover’s back. It’s well past my bedtime, yet somehow I’m calmer than I’ve been in days. An amber glow warms the room as I settle back comfortably into a padded chair and think of my beloved Allamanda.

The eye of the storm no doubt. Four hours before zero hour. Four hours to kill. Yet, strangely, I am not nervous. It all seems so inevitable. Like a death sentence.

Could it be the fresh blood pumping through muscles that had long lay dormant like a recharged battery in an old car after being taken out for a long-awaited spin? Could it be relief after a highly stressful yet successful hunt, the thrill of the kill, the taste of the spoils, the fluffer-honey-nutter-Hershey bar sandwich splashed with a liberal dose of raspberry syrup all washed down with a coconut-fudge milkshake? Regardless, I lay a blank page before me, take pen in hand, and imagine my one true passion, the love of my life, the angel sent by the heavens to save my soul: Allamanda.

Closing my eyes tightly, I call upon the muses to deliver a divine vision.

Allamanda,

I have seen your flower

in picture books, but never

have I beheld one more lovely

than the blossom of your eyes,

black as a thousand midnights,

rising to meet mine.

“The posse drew up to the old hospital when we were set upon by Manuela Bowdre who had already heard of her husband’s death. She waxed hysterical upon seeing Pat Garrett and pounced upon him like a panther scratching and kicking and generally misusing his person. She aired her lungs in a local Spanish that I am sure I am grateful not to have understood. She had to be pulled off which was no easy chore considering the care that had to be taken for she was in the family way.”128

I read my words of love back and feel my heartbeat quicken. Thusly inspired, I get up and rummage around the library for books on flowers. Behind a pile of newspapers, I find them. In the last book, Plants A-Z: The Complete Handbook of Plants for Home or Garden, I locate exactly what I need. The flower is more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.

Neither have I smelled

the buttercup-yellow bloom

of the Allamanda Cathartica,

but if that scent merely hints

at the sweet fragrance

which whispers your passing,

never could I enter your garden

without swooning in ecstasy.

“We were having them fitted for irons at the black smith in Fort Sumner when an old Indian woman who called herself Deluvina Maxwell came in. She would only speak to Sheriff Pat Garrett and told him that she had been sent by Maria de la Luz Beaubien Maxwell to ask that he allow the Señora and her daughter to say goodbye to Bilito.

“Out of respect, Pat did agree, but he took care to have the Kid shackled by the leg to Dave Rudabaugh, another of the desperados we had captured that day, and me and Lee Hall marched them lockstep to the Maxwell hacienda.”129

Allamanda,

shall I compare thee

to your flowered namesake?

Your smooth olive skin

is surely softer than any petal.

Your torso curves more supply

than the stem of any climbing vine.

Your raven-silk hair

sways in the breeze lighter

than any leaf, yet your roots

flow deeper into the earth

than the thickest of flushed foliage.

“The old Indian woman left us in the foyer to get Señora Maxwell. She came in dressed formally and took the Kid’s hand in greeting. She asked us into the living room. Being full of trail dust, we begged off. Her daughter Paulita came in and hugged the Kid in tears. Señora Maxwell pleaded with me to free Bilito long enough to go into a private room with Paulita so they could talk awhile. I told her how very sorry I was, but this I could not do. Escape may not have been on their minds, but to release the Kid for any reason would not be a wise thing to do at all.”130

Would that I

could pluck your pedicel

and hold you in my arms for

eternity—yet I dare not,

for I can only gaze

upon your expansive grace

and allow your presence to fill me

with the benign light of silence.

I look over my handiwork and like a silly little child, feel a tear well up my eye. It drops upon the page.

“The lovers embraced and she gave Billy one of those soul kisses the novelists tell us about. It being time to hit the trail for Vegas, we had to pull them apart much against our wishes for as you know, all the world loves a lover.”

- James East131

An overwhelming fatigue overtakes me. I look up at the clock: 2 p.m. If I don’t go now, I may never go, and I must go. I’ll wait in the park on my favorite bench, the one hidden within a wooden nook, far from prying eyes. It’s been too long since I last ventured there. It will strengthen me to my task.

My palms are so sweaty, I have trouble getting on a new set of latex gloves.