DRUNKARD! DOG-FACED, QUIVERING, DEER-HEARTED COWARD!

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THE BALANCE OF THE SPINNING WORLD SHIFTS when a beloved and benevolent father dies. The weight of a constant presence is lifted away. Unanswerable questions are asked in the middle of the night. Could I have done more? Said more? What should I have asked while there was still time? What did he mean by those last words? Beyond the questions, there are practicalities. Have his taxes been paid? What about all these bills? Is this claim on the estate legitimate? What should I do next? And next, and next, and after that? Even a devoted and competent son may falter, overwhelmed and at a loss.

But what if the father was a mean-spirited, violent, contemptuous old bastard? What if the son’s education was sketchy and his brains regularly rattled in childhood? What if he often woke to the sting of a knife blade held against his throat and the smell of whiskey on the old man’s breath. I made you. You’re mine. I can do anything I want to you and nobody can stop me. Nobody. What if the son himself drank far too much whenever he escaped the old man’s notice?

Daddy’s dead, Ike would think. He’s gone. He ain’t coming back, and I’m glad.

Then he’d worry about ghosts and wonder if his father could hear his thoughts and return to harm him in some way. A dozen times a day, Ike would glance over his shoulder, cringing in anticipation of a blow, a threat, a sneer. He would see himself with his father’s missing eyes and hear that absent tongue wag all day long. You’re an idiot and everybody knows it. You’re soft, like your mother. You should be wearing a dress, you worthless, sniveling little girl.

“Ike, you look like you could use a drink,” Ringo would say, and he was always right. It took a lot of whiskey to make the old man’s voice shut up.

People kept showing up at the ranch. They wanted Ike to make decisions, to answer questions, to pay money the old man owed or deliver goods he’d promised to provide. But the old man had always treated Ike like a half-wit hired hand and never told him one thing about the business. So Ike would just stand there, not knowing what to say.

Ike’s little brother, Billy, would laugh at him for looking so confused, but Ringo was kind. Ringo stuck up for Ike.

“They got no right to look at you like you’re stupid,” he’d say. “Nobody has that right, Ike. You want respect, Ike? You have to take it. You have to fight for it.”

“Fight for it,” Ike said.

“Leave Ike alone,” Curly Bill would tell Ringo. “He’s funning you, Ike.”

Used to be, Ike liked Curly Bill more. Now Ringo was his friend.

“I’m just helping Ike think,” Ringo would say. “He likes it when I help him think, don’t you, Ike? You need help thinking.”

“I need help,” Ike would agree. Then he’d have another drink with Ringo.

IT TOOK SOME TIME for Ike to put all the pieces together in his mind. The first thing to come clear was that he didn’t have to go to California after all. I can take care of the girls here, he thought. Or they can get married. They don’t have to ask permission. The old man’s dead, and he ain’t coming back.

I can open a new restaurant, he thought, and that’s when he remembered promising to tell Wyatt Earp about where those men were. Because that was the plan, before the old man got killed. Ike was supposed to find where Bill Leonard, Henry Head, and Jim Crane were and tell Wyatt Earp. Wyatt was going to arrest them. Ike would get $3,600 from Wells Fargo, and Wyatt would get votes when he ran for sheriff next year.

Except before Ike could do that, Bill Leonard and Henry Head got killed by the Hazlett brothers out in Ánimas Valley. The Hazletts could have collected $2,400 from Wells Fargo for doing that because the reward was twelve hundred apiece, dead or alive. But then Johnny Ringo killed the Hazlett boys because they killed Bill and Henry. And then Jim Crane got killed in Skeleton Canyon with the old man.

Now nobody would get the Wells Fargo reward. Not Ike, nor the Hazletts, nor Ringo. Ike thought that was a pity. It was a lot of money and would have been nice to have, even though he didn’t have to move to California now.

AT FIRST IKE DIDN’T REMEMBER anything about Doc Holliday being in on the deal. Then one night when all the boys were sitting around drinking, Frank McLaury started in about how crooked the Earps were and how they were all pimps and their women were all whores, and how they held up that stagecoach themselves. Frank could prove it, too: The Earps blamed Bill Leonard and Henry Head and Jim Crane for the crime.

“It’s just like when that goddam army lieutenant blamed Tommy and me for stealing those mules, when Hurst really stole the animals his own self!”

Billy Clanton usually got a laugh out of that because he stole those mules. It always tickled him how Frank was so convinced of his story that he’d tell it to Billy’s face and expect to be believed. But Billy Clanton wasn’t with Ike that night. He was off in Charleston, whoring with Little Willie Claiborne, who was celebrating his release on bail after shooting Jim Hickey in the face.

Curly Bill was there, and he used to find Frank’s notions funny, too, but Bill didn’t laugh much anymore, and that evening, he got all broody about how Wyatt Earp had bent a pistol over his head after that accident with Fred White.

“I bet you any amount of money nobody hit Doc Holliday’s head when he got arrested for that holdup,” Curly Bill said. “Two men dead, but Holliday can get away with anything ’cause the Earps are always there to protect his bony carcass.”

“Yep,” Ringo agreed, “and now all four of ’em are gonna get away with killing Old Man Clanton.”

Which made everybody stop talking and look at Ringo.

So he told them about how Holliday and the Earps were the ones who killed the old man in Skeleton Canyon. “I saw Holliday gimping around Tombstone myself,” Ringo said. “I asked him, ‘What happened to your leg, Holliday?’ And that skinny goddam lunger started bragging! He said, ‘Me and the Earps ran down Old Man Clanton and his boys, and we killed them sonsabitches in Skeleton Canyon.’ But, Ike, your daddy pulled out that little pocket gun he carried in his boot. He shot Holliday in the leg. So your old man got a little of his own back before Holliday killed him.”

“Holliday killed him,” Ike said, dazed.

“Yep. And bragged about it.”

“Bragged about it.”

“The Earps’ll protect him,” Curly Bill said bitterly.

“They’re all in on it,” Frank said.

“They’re all in on it,” Ike said.

“They’ll never get convicted!” Frank went on. “Earps always have an alibi. Oh, I was with Wyatt. Oh, I was with Doc. Oh, I never did nothing wrong in my whole life . . . And then the goddam liars’ll turn around and pin the blame on somebody else.”

“Pin the blame . . .” Ike said.

“Somebody’s got to pay,” Ringo said softly. “When one of ours is killed, we gotta make the bastards pay.”

“Make the bastards pay,” Ike said, but even then, he was still thinking, The old man’s dead. He ain’t never coming back. And I’m glad.

SOMETIMES CURLY BILL WOULD WARN, “Ringo’s playing with you, Ike.”

“I’m just teaching a parrot to talk,” Ringo would say.

“C’mon, Juanito,” Bill would say. “Leave Ike alone.”

Ringo would just wait until Curly Bill wasn’t around, and then he’d start in again about that goddam lunger Holliday killing Old Man Clanton.

“I can’t think straight,” Ike would protest.

“Well, try thinking crooked then,” Ringo would tell him, with that angel smile of his. “It’s in the Bible, Ike. Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. Life for life.”

“Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth,” Ike said, beginning to squirm.

“If you’re tired of being hit, you have to hit back, Ike.”

“Hit back.”

“You want respect, Ike? You have to take it. You have to fight for it.”

“Fight for it.”

“Pull a gun, Ike. You pull a gun, you’re on top. Pull a gun and you’ll get some respect—just like that!” Ringo would say, snapping his fingers.

Ike rubbed his face with both hands. He hadn’t shaved in a long time. His beard was getting as bushy as the old man’s was.

“One of ours gets killed, we have to kill a few of theirs,” Ringo told him. “That’s how you get respect, Ike. You gotta make ’em pay.”

Don’t talk back, Ike thought.

“Make ’em pay,” he said.

THEN THERE WAS THE NIGHT when Ike and Billy were up late, drinking and talking about the old man.

“You recollect that time he told you to get up on the roof, Ike?”

“Jump!” Ike yelled in the old man’s voice.

Billy giggled, just like when he was five and saw it happen. “Yeah, he kept telling you, ‘Jump! I’ll catch you!’”

“I’ll catch you!” Ike remembered.

“So you jumped, and then bang! He just stepped back and watched you hit the ground.”

“Don’t! Trust! Nobody!” Ike roared, making his voice as fierce as the old man’s was.

“You learnt yer lesson yet, boy?” Billy roared, the same way. Then he made his voice humble, like Ike’s was that day, even though Ike was twenty-four when it happened and should have been a man. “‘Yes, sir!’ you said. ‘Yes, sir, I learnt my lesson!’”

Don’t trust nobody.

THE OLD MAN WAS DEAD. The dread wasn’t. The dread was still there. A deep hole waiting—wanting, needing—to be filled.

Ike began to go over the deal with Wyatt in his mind. Ringo couldn’t help him think about this. Ringo was being friendly now, but he could be a mean sonofabitch, too. Even Curly Bill was scared of Ringo sometimes.

You can go to California, Wyatt said. You can open another café. Just tell me where Henry Head and Jim Crane and Bill Leonard are. You get the reward, I get the votes, and Holliday gets clear.

Then one night, the hole filled up. They’re all in on it.

Wyatt Earp must’ve told Doc Holliday. What if Holliday brags on that? And what if Ringo finds out I was gonna sell Henry and Jim and Bill to Wyatt Earp?

He’ll kill me, Ike thought. Ringo will kill me, just like he did the Hazlett boys.