Three

 

Gillom avoided details over his mother’s supper that night, saying only that people had been shot in the Constantinople that afternoon, probably Books, too. Bond Rogers had decided to move her son out of his smaller upstairs bedroom and open that one up to another boarder, if any roomers ever showed up on her doorstep again after all this bloody mayhem. She wanted Gillom staying in J. B. Books’s larger downstairs room. The shootist had left nothing behind but his notorious reputation and the fact he’d shot two country cousins who’d tried to kill him in that very corner room only a week ago. No respectable person would rent a room housing those murderous ghosts till long forgot. She also thought it would be easier to keep track of her delinquent son in a main-floor room, right below hers.

Gillom was happy to help his mother move his clothes downstairs to Books’s suddenly vacant quarters. His nostrils still caught scent of the faint mix of flaming gunpowder and urine from when Books had doused the burning bedsheets with the contents of his piss pot after those two jaspers had tried to murder him right there. His mother had bought new bedding and a mattress, to which he quickly gave a bounce test. Gillom rose from the refurbished bed and went to the west and then the south windows, sliding their wooden sashes higher to let in more cool night air. These glassed downstairs windows will make my comings and goings easier, he realized.

Gillom returned to bed, pulled his bedspread up higher against the spring chill. But he was restless, squirming under stiff, new sheets, nerves still taut from the events of his momentous day. The seventeen-year-old jerked again from bed, padded in nightshirt and bare feet to the curtained closet. He groped the top shelf inside where he had dumped his cowboy hat and leather baseball glove and pulled Books’s whiskey bottle from a cubbyhole his mother had missed. A corner of redeye remained.

Hurling himself back into bed, Gillom made the wooden frame sway and creak. Nestling with his prize, he pulled the cork with his teeth, grimaced as the whiskey seared his palate. He mused: Men drank whiskey, tough men like J. B. Books. I’ll have to get used to this harsh taste. My sarsaparilla days are over.

Burning alcohol slid down his teenaged gullet and mixed with the warm beer he’d gulped six hours earlier. Gillom Rogers relaxed, remembering the first time he’d encountered the famous gunman, just a week ago. Books had spotted him spying, grabbed him by the throat and yanked him right up to this very room’s window. Nearly choked him out before the sick old man had collapsed on the windowsill, exhausted. Gillom dozed.

He awoke to whispers on the wind. Curtains in the west window to the side of his headboard moved in the morning breeze. Bright sunlight. A giggle and a loud sssshh. I’m not dreaming, somebody is spying on me! Eyes wide, Gillom leapt out of bed, jumped to the open window, thrust his head outside.

“Hey!” The gigglers jerked back in fear, surprised by the teenager’s suddenness. “Don’t you spy on me! I’ll whup your setters so hard, you’ll stand for a week!”

Then he launched right through the open window to do it. Frightened by this angry young man right in their small faces, the two peepers turned tail and skedaddled across the grassy yard. A skinny tyke with black hair and big ears and a taller towhead.

Both boys flew over his mother’s picket fence on the bounce.

Must have talked to someone, heard what I did, Gillom thought. Gol-lee! I’m notorious before breakfast!

*   *   *

His mother sat at the head of the long dining table, Daily Herald in hand. Her right hand quivered as she turned the front page to continue reading about El Paso’s killings yesterday. Her intake of breath startled the silence. She’d read her son’s name again in the newspaper.

Gillom slunk into the dining room. He’d heard her crank telephone in the front parlor ring several times, but had dozed until little boys whispering outside his window had pulled him from conflicted sleep. He could see from the Herald’s headline how deep he was in.…

INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHT! J. B. BOOKS KILLED IN EL PASO BLOODBATH!

His mother lowered the paper to search him with haunted eyes. She shoved her untouched plate of eggs and biscuit and unsipped cup of coffee along the tabletop.

“You eat my breakfast. I have no appetite.”

“Ma, please.”

“Please. That’s a funny word, isn’t it? How one can twist its meaning into something completely different. You displease me greatly. My son, the only child I have born, is now a killer.”

“Did him a favor, mother. Mister Books asked me to. It was … merciful.”

Her face was drawn, but her voice remarkably level.

“It was a bloody slaughter. Which you evidently helped arrange. For some kind of payoff. Oh yes, I read you took his guns.”

“It was our deal. His pistols for my service. Mister Books didn’t wish to die in bed, so he committed suicide.”

“In public. And by assisting him in this public slaughter, you’ve brought shame upon us. Disgraced our family’s proud name … around all of Texas. Forever.”

Her son waved his hands to stop. “Mother! People are saying Mister Books did El Paso a public service. Rid this town of all its hard cases. And I helped him do it.”

Her eyes flared. “I didn’t read that in here.” She tapped the inky newsprint with a sharp fingernail. “You are named the assassin’s assistant.… Where are they?”

“What?”

“His guns.”

“Oh. They’re well hid.”

“We’ll have to turn them in. To the marshal. I’m sure they’ll be wanted.”

“Be damned if I will.”

“Gillom!”

“Look, I’m not breaking any law. Thibido will just sell ’em, after the court work is done. He’s a shyster, a peacock. His deputies do all his dirty work.”

“Well you’re already infamous, taking his guns and using them on poor Mister Books. If you’re seen on the street with those pistols, somebody will try to shoot you, too, to steal them. Until we’re rid of those bad luck weapons, wash our hands thoroughly of this shameful business, more trouble will follow us. I feel pain in my bones already.”

Gillom rose from the table, his loaned breakfast untouched.. “Be goddamned if I give up those guns. To anybody. I earned ’em.”

His threat hanging heavy, the young man stomped back down the hall to his room. His disobedience, again, finally cracked his mother. Bond burst into tears, slamming both palms onto the hard wooden table.

“Damn you, John Bernard Books!”

If anybody but the Lord had been listening, they’d have been shocked. It was the first time Bond Rogers had ever sworn.