Chapter Two

DALLAS, 1873

THE CITY HAD BIG PLANS FOR ITSELF, BUT A LONG WAYS TO GO STILL TO get there. Although a new red brick courthouse cast a substantial shadow, Dallas was mostly board-sided buildings lining prairie sod streets, with as many saloons as dry good stores and merchant shops in the one mile stretch between the train depot and the Trinity River—the liquor likely making up for the fact that there was no public water fit to drink. Yet there was a sense of excitement to the place that pleased John Henry, in spite of the herds of pigs and cows that crowded Main Street.

It was the coming of the railroads that had turned Dallas from farm town to cowtown, with the Houston & Texas Central building north from the coast and the Texas & Pacific Rail Line laying tracks west from Shreveport toward Fort Worth and on to California. In a few years, the whole of Texas would be crossed by rails, part of a great transcontinental railroad system—or so the plans went. For now, Dallas was end-of-the-line and the place where planters brought their cotton to ship and cattlemen brought their stock to market, making the dirt streets a noisy, smelly mess.

Dr. Seegar’s office was located in the middle of the busiest part of town, on Elm Street halfway between Market and Austin, in a second-floor suite above a druggist. And though he’d never heard of young Dr. John Henry Holliday before, other than the letter of recommendation he carried with him, the doctor had been cordial enough.

“So what brings you to Dallas, Dr. Holliday?” Dr. Seegar asked, looking up from the letter and studying him. “According to what your uncle writes, you had a good career ahead of yourself in Georgia.”

“Opportunity,” John Henry replied easily, having practiced the answer all the way up from Washington County, another smoky twelve-hour train ride that had left him coughing again. “I hear that Dallas is boomin’ and full of possibilities for a young man like myself.”

“Oh, it’s boomin’ all right,” Dr. Seegar said, and a moment later the board and plaster walls of the office began to shake and rattle as if to prove the point, and he raised his voice to go on. “There’s a new hotel goin’ up a block from here, so we get the blessin’ of the sound and the fury both.”

“Shakespeare,” John Henry said with a nod.

“Pardon me?”

“You were quotin’ Shakespeare. Macbeth: Fifth Act, I believe. I memorized a lot of the classics as a schoolboy.” Then he finished the quotation, as Professor Varnedoe had taught him to do back at the Valdosta Institute:

“Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

He smiled at his own performance, but there was no appreciative applause from Dr. Seegar as there had always been from his classmates in school.

“Well, you won’t find much use for that kind of education around here,” Seegar said, “unless you aim for a career on the stage.”

The remark might have seemed like a criticism coming from someone else, but Dr. Seegar didn’t seem the type to criticize. He was a mild-mannered fellow, slight of build, with a balding patch in the middle of his thin brown hair, and a brown beard and mustache to match, giving him the impression of being done all in sepia tone.

“But if you enjoy the theater,” he went on, “we do get some good entertainment at the Opera House, though the show outside is often better than the show inside.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s the trouble with the dressing rooms. The owner forgot to put any in, so the actors are obliged to climb out the back window and run down the street to the Grand Hotel to change their costumes. Sometimes, when the show’s a little dull, the audience goes outside to see the actors makin’ an exhibition of themselves. But that’s not nearly as entertainin’ as the show Belle Swink puts on.”

“Belle Swink?” John Henry asked. “Is she one of the actresses?”

“Certainly not. Belle’s a mule, one of the team that pulls the Dallas Street Railway car. She’s well behaved, as mules go, until the rains come and this prairie sod turns to mud. Then Belle gets stuck and the railcar comes off its tracks and the passengers have to climb out and right it again. The operator tried to rectify matters awhile back by layin’ down planks of Bois D’Arc wood from the banks of the Trinity, but they just sank down into the mud like everything else does. You may wonder why I am tellin’ you these colorful stories.”

“Yessir, I am.”

Dr. Seegar nodded toward the window with its view of Elm Street business buildings and cattle-filled roads. “Dallas is pretty rough around the edges still. I wouldn’t want you to settle here expectin’ the kind of life you had in Atlanta. But you are right about there bein’ plenty of opportunity for a man who’s willin’ to work. Of course, there are some personal conditions I would expect you to meet should we become partners.”

“Yessir?”

“As a family man, the moral climate of this community is of great concern to me. That’s why I’ve accepted the position of President of the Dallas Temperance League. I would expect that my partner be willin’ to hold with my stand against drinking. Would that be a problem for you?”

John Henry shifted uncomfortably, feeling the weight of the whiskey flask in his coat pocket. He’d refilled it just before his interview, finding a liquor store conveniently close on the corner of Elm Street.

“No, Sir, that wouldn’t be any problem at all.”

“And I would naturally expect my partner to be a church-goin’ man, as well. My family and I attend the Baptist Church. I assume you have a chosen denomination?”

That answer came more easily, trained into him over long years by his mother. “Yessir, I was raised a Methodist-Episcopalian.”

Seegar smiled as though satisfied. “Well, if what your uncle writes of you is true, you come well qualified to join my practice—Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, associate of Dr. Arthur Ford in Atlanta, attendee of the Georgia Dental Society Convention. We seldom see such professional dental practitioners in this locale. Most of the other dentists in town are home-trained barber surgeons. But that is what has made my practice successful: professionalism. I have worked for ten years to build a quality name in this part of Texas. I would expect you to uphold that level of service to the community.”

John Henry glanced around the well-appointed office, knowing that it would be some time before he could afford such a space of his own, much less equip it adequately. He needed Dr. Seegar and his successful practice, whatever sacrifice he had to make—even if that meant keeping his drinking private and making a public show of being a temperance man. But hadn’t he come to Texas to make a fresh start for himself, after all?

“It would be an honor to work with you, Dr. Seegar,” he said. “And I look forward to walkin’ the paths of rectitude here in Dallas.”

He had some letters to write once he’d gotten himself settled in a boarding house room nearby to the dental office. His wrote to his Uncle John Holliday in Atlanta, thanking him for the recommendation and telling him of his new partnership with their old family friend. He wrote to his Uncle Tom McKey in Valdosta, asking him to send along the personal items he’d left behind in his hurried departure, most particularly the trunk full of dental tools and books that he would need in his new business. And he wrote to Mattie, telling her that he had chosen to establish himself in Dallas where he planned to make a fine career and prove himself the man she had always wanted him to be, and that he hoped she might someday be able to visit him there. To his father, he sent a short note saying that he had moved to Texas.

Dr. Seegar wore a frock coat to work, presenting a professional appearance as well as keeping his suit clothes clean from the spittle and drill filings that flew from the open mouths of his patients, and he expected his new partner to dress in similar fashion. So John Henry’s first purchase in Dallas, after paying a month’s rent in advance to the landlady at his boarding house, was a new black wool coat made by the Jewish merchant, Emmanuel Kahn.

It was Dr. Seegar’s suggestion that he visit E.M. Kahn’s Gent’s Furnishing Goods on Commerce Street, though that might not have been John Henry’s first choice for a clothier. To his knowledge, he had never before had any dealings with a Jew, only heard stories of them or seen them from a distance, like the long-bearded men he had watched walking to their Synagogue in Philadelphia. “Hebrews,” his mother would have called them, saying in hushed tones that they were not Christian and had crucified the Lord, though his Aunt Permelia had always had more generous views, commenting that the Jews were the best business people she had ever known, Christian or not. In fact, his Aunt had caused a minor scandal in Fayetteville, the year the War started, by traveling to Atlanta to buy silk from a Jewish merchant to be sewn into a battle flag for the Fayette Rifle Grays. The ladies of the town weren’t entirely sure if the Lord would bless their efforts in making the flag and, thereby, not bless the boys who carried it into battle, considering the source of the material. But silk was silk, his Aunt Permelia insisted, and the Jewish merchant’s price was the best to be found—as long as one didn’t mind a little haggling. In the end, the ladies sat demurely in Aunt Permelia’s parlor, stitching the flag together and embroidering its brave motto: We come back in honor, or come not again. The fact that the flag did come home again, and without a tear or tatter, seemed to show that the Lord had accepted it, after all.

So it was with a mix of his mother’s caution and his aunt’s practicality, along with his own curiosity, that John Henry stopped into Emmanuel Kahn’s store to be measured for his new wool frock coat—and found the man to be almost nothing like what he’d expected. Instead of a dour-dressed rabbi like the Jews he’d seen in Philadelphia, Emmanuel Kahn was a dapper young man with a fashionable French accent.

“I was born in the Alsace-Lorraine,” Kahn explained. “And the French, as you know, are gifted with a sense of style.”

“Seems like a long way from France to Texas,” John Henry commented. “And from what I can see, Dallas isn’t a city to appreciate style all that much.”

“Ah! But that is where the opportunity comes!” the merchant said with a smile. “As the first retailer of men’s clothing in this city, it is my style the men of Dallas will wear. And may I suggest that this black frock would look more finished if you carried a cane?”

“I’m sure it would, but as I’m plannin’ to wear the coat at work, I won’t have much use for a walkin’ stick.”

Emmanuel Kahn sighed as he rolled his measuring tape and slipped it into the pocket of his own coat. “A pity. I was hoping to interest you in one of my new shipment from Paris, a gold-headed cane fit for a Southern aristocrat.”

“And what makes you think I’m an aristocrat, anyhow?” John Henry asked with some amusement. Surely, the man was only speaking flattery to get him to buy that gold-headed cane—a needless bit of luxury.

“It is in your tone,” Kahn replied, “and in the way you carry yourself: neck proud and shoulders squared. Your bearing shows you to be a man of substance, satisfied with his place in the world. A clothier notices things like that.”

John Henry didn’t disagree, though he knew himself to be neither an aristocrat nor satisfied with his place in the world. The only aristocrat he had ever known was his Grandfather McKey, with his thousands of cotton acres at Indian Creek Plantation and his hundreds of slaves to work the place. That kind of aristocracy had disappeared after the War and John Henry would never know the equal of it.

“And what about yourself?” he asked, changing the subject. “You don’t seem all that Jewish, for a Jew. I mean, you don’t look like any Jews I ever knew.”

“Oh, I am thoroughly an Israelite, I assure you. I was, in fact, trained to be a cantor. My parents died when I was still a boy, and my relatives— well meaning, certainly—thought it best to train me for the synagogue. I served there for a year before a life of trade beckoned me. Some would say, however, that trade is a religion to the Jew. So tell me, a frock coat of this quality, of such fine material and exquisite tailoring, what would you like to offer me for it?”

John Henry had to hide a smile, remembering his Aunt Permelia’s story of the haggling silk merchant in Atlanta. “Whatever I offer will be far too little,” he said with mock cordiality, “and I’d hate to insult you with a price you couldn’t accept. Why don’t you just decide what price you’d like to be paid, and I’ll decide if I’d like to pay it.”

Emmanuel Kahn sighed heavily and shook his head. “That is the only trouble with doing business in Dallas,” he said with disappointment, “no one wants to barter the price. Just hang a tag on the merchandise and take in the money. What an impersonal way to do business! I might as well bring in a railcar loaded with ready-made suits and give up on the tailoring business entirely. Of course, then you’d never know the pleasure of wearing a frock coat custom made to your particular measurements, a style selected to suit your aristocratic joie de la vie.”

John Henry had to laugh at the man’s imaginative enterprise.

“All right, Mr. Kahn, you win. Tell me your price and I’ll tell you it’s too much. Then we can duel it out all night until one of us goes home with a frock coat. But I’m not buyin’ that gold cane, so you can save your breath.”

“No, no, of course not,” Emmanuel Kahn replied. “It is far too expensive for you, being newly into business yourself. I wouldn’t dream of taking your money for something so frivolous, so modèle élève. The cane is entirely forgotten.”

He might not look like the Jews that John Henry had seen in Philadelphia, but Emmanuel Kahn knew how to haggle a sale.

The Jews had first arrived in Dallas twenty years before the railroads came, fleeing from revolutions in their European homelands, then planting their cemetery on the rolling prairie sod and gathering together in Congregation Emanu-El. They had hopes of building a Temple and bringing in a rabbi for regular services as their numbers grew, though they already had a bigger community than the Catholics whose scattering of Irish families were served by a traveling priest from the parish of St. Paul in Collin County, forty miles away. But as a Southern city, Dallas had more Protestants than any other denomination, with Disciples of Christ and Baptists and Cumberland Presbyterians and the four-hundred members of the Methodist congregation the most numerous of all.

John Henry had told Dr. Seegar that he was raised a Methodist-Episcopalian, so that was the sect with which he chose to affiliate himself. But it wasn’t just for Dr. Seegar’s sake that he was trying to make a show of being a churchgoing man. It was for his own sake and salvation, as well, being haunted still by the horror of what had driven him from Georgia. He would never forget the face of the faceless boy and the blood on the Withlacoochee River, but he hoped that by attending to his worship, God might be willing, someday, to forget and forgive.

So he took his place on the log pews of the one-room chapel of the First Methodist Church, and offered his devotions along with the rest of the congregation. The minister preached the grace of God from a pulpit at one end of the cramped building, the pump organ played at the other, and between them the worshippers sang hymns and knelt for prayers. The Methodists had always been great hymn singers, likely one of the reasons John Henry’s musical mother had favored them, and the Sunday music brought back memories of his childhood in Georgia and of the need of a sinner like himself for a redeemer:

Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee!
Let the water and the blood
From thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me pure!

According to one Sunday’s sermon, the number of sins a man might commit in his life could run to over two million possible digressions, surely more than any mortal being could atone for and numerical proof of the need for divine intervention. But John Henry had only committed a handful of sins, not counting his youthful follies, so surely God’s grace would be sufficient to cover his few real failings—including a murder he hadn’t meant to commit. And with that hope, he joined in reciting the Lord’s Prayer and sang the hymns with all the gusto of the good Christian he knew he should be. Texas was his new beginning, after all.

In October, the North Texas Agricultural, Mechanical & Blood Stock Association Fair opened in a pretty grove of hardwood trees out past the tracks of the Texas & Pacific and the Houston & Central railways. Though the event was promoted as the “First Great State Fair of Texas,” and promised to bring a boom of business second only to the coming of the railroads, it looked more like a circus than business to John Henry. There was a livestock ring at the center of the fairgrounds and a circle of red-striped tents around that, and with the First Texas Artillery Corps firing off their big guns every time a prize was announced, and prize competitions in fifty categories, the air thundered with salutes all day long.

At Dr. Seegar’s suggestion, John Henry had entered some of his dental school projects in the Scientific Exhibitions as advertising for their new partnership. A frontier town like Dallas rarely saw such fine work, so he easily won three blue ribbons and a cash prize of $15 for his display: a set of teeth in cast gold, a set of teeth in porcelain, and a denture made of carved ivory and vulcanized rubber. And along with the ribbons and the money, he won his own noisy cannon salute and the admiration of a pretty young girl.

“Hello Dr. Holliday!” she called as she appeared, breathless and beaming, out of the crowd on the midway at the end of the awards ceremony.

“Why, Lenora Seegar,” John Henry said, smiling down at Dr. Seegar’s daughter, “I didn’t expect to see you here today. Where’s your folks?”

“Mother’s over there,” she said, pointing toward the Home Crafts tent. “We’ve entered some of our baked goods in the contest. Mother thinks my cobbler may take first prize. I made your favorite,” she added with a shy flutter of lashes, “’least the one you always say you like so well when you come for Sunday supper.”

John Henry had stayed with the Seegars his first few days after arriving in Dallas before taking a boarding house room, and he still had supper there once a week, much to the delight of Lenora. She was thirteen-years old and too naïve to know how to hide her adolescent infatuation for her father’s young dental partner. But John Henry didn’t mind the attention, considering it an innocent form of flattery, and he always tried to treat her kindly.

“Well, I bet you do take first place. You’re the best cook I know in Dallas.”

She blushed at the compliment, and John Henry realized that she looked different somehow.

“What is it you’ve done to yourself, Lenora? You look all grown up today.”

“It must be my hair,” she said, putting her hand to the ringlets at the back of her head. “Mother let me wear it up for the fair. Do you like it?”

“Very much. Shows off those pretty eyes of yours.”

“Oh!” she said, and John Henry had to hold back a laugh. She was no older than he’d been when he first knew he loved Mattie, and the feeling had been so overwhelming he could hardly contain it. The carnival barker must have seen that same look on Lenora’s face, for he called out:

“Win your sweetheart a prize, Sir? Lasso yourself one of these pretty celluloid dolls and it’s yours. Just toss this wooden hoop and ring a doll. It’s so simple, a child could do it.”

“And how much to buy a hoop?”

“A nickel, Sir, just a nickel and the prize is yours.”

“Would you like me to win you a doll, Lenora?” John Henry asked, reaching for the change. “You pick the one you want and it’s yours.”

“Oh, no,” she said, biting her lip, “I couldn’t . . .”

“Why not? It’ll be a souvenir, somethin’ to remember the fair by.”

“But isn’t tossin’ the ring a game of chance?”

“I reckon so.”

“Then father would never approve. He says all games of chance are gamblin’, and gamblin’ is a sin . . .”

“A sin? Throwin’ a nickel hoop around a little doll? I don’t believe it!”

“Oh, yes, he’s very firm about all forms of gamblin’. He says that little games of chance just lead to all kinds of other things, terrible things like card playin’ and horse racin’, and . . .”

“And drinkin’?”

“And drinkin’,” Lenora answered meekly. “Mother was a preacher’s daughter, you know, and Father promised him to always keep the Lord’s word about such things.”

“Well, I consider gamblin’ a gentleman’s sport, and I happen to be very good at it.” Then he put the nickel in the barker’s hand and took the wooden hoop, giving it a light toss and watching with satisfaction as it settled down easily onto the prettiest of the painted dolls. “In addition to being a good dentist, I am also a fine aim. Now, do you want the prize or shall I find another girl to give it to?”

He spoke sharply, though he wasn’t really angry at Lenora—it wasn’t her fault that Dr. Seegar had ridiculous views on gaming. But he hated to be criticized in public, and the doll was suddenly more than just a prize to him.

“Well,” he said, pressing the point, “do you want it or not?”

Lenora looked like she might start to cry, torn between her Father’s dictates and the power of her adolescent infatuation. But love got the better of her, and when John Henry held the doll out to her, she took it.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

For a moment, John Henry felt almost ashamed of himself for forcing Lenora to take the prize. It didn’t really mean all that much to him, anyhow, and it might bring trouble for her.

“What’s that ring you always wear?” Lenora asked, interrupting his uncomfortable thoughts. “The one you’re always playing with? It’s so small, it hardly fits you. Did you have it as a child?”

He held out his hand and the gold Irish Claddagh ring caught the light. He still wasn’t used to the feel of it on his little finger or the way it stuck halfway past his knuckle, and he did catch himself twisting at it from time to time.

“It was a goin’ away gift from my cousin,” he said, remembering how Mattie had given it to him on their last day together. Two hands for friendship and a heart for love, she had said, describing the ancient symbols on her grandmother’s heirloom ring that would be a kind of promise between them. “I have never taken it off since.”

“Then you must be very fond of her. Is she—beautiful?” Lenora asked, and John Henry looked at her quizzically.

“How did you know it came from a woman?”

“Well, it’s too tiny to be a man’s ring, and—there was somethin’ in your face, I guess.”

Woman’s intuition, John Henry thought with amazement. Even though she was mostly a child still, Lenora seemed to have that same kind of insight that Mattie had always had, seeing into his heart somehow and knowing what he was feeling.

“She is beautiful to me,” he answered. “I miss her very much.” And fighting back the lonely memory, he took Lenora’s hand in his. “Come on, I’ve got to get you back to your mother. She must be worried about you by now.”

Lenora went willingly, her little hand soft in his, the doll held close against her. And for a few wistful moments, John Henry thought that if only Lenora were just a few years older they might be able to share company long enough for him to forget about Mattie for awhile.

But he didn’t want to forget Mattie, not ever. The memory of her still shone as bright in his heart as that gold Claddagh ring, and he intended to be faithful to it.

While he couldn’t fault Dr. Seegar for having conservative views on drinking, he didn’t think it fair that he should have to keep himself to such puritanical ways in regards to gambling. He’d been raised playing cards and considered gaming a proper gentleman’s pastime. Back in Atlanta, the biggest saloon and gambling house in the city had been owned by the Mayor, and the best men of Southern society spent their evenings there, discussing politics and the War they should have won. So with little else to fill his after-work hours in Dallas, a friendly game seemed a welcome and suitable entertainment for a Southern gentleman like himself.

The city of Dallas didn’t agree with his opinion, however, having made gaming in a house of spirituous liquors a legal offense. A man could drink until he was senseless and gamble until he was flat broke, but he couldn’t do both in the same establishment without fear of being arrested—a ridiculous statute which most of the Main Street saloons got around by having one room for drinking and another room for gaming. But as the saloon patrons tended to drift from one room to another carrying drinks and poker chips along with them, the drinking and the gambling generally ran together and kept the local police busy and the police coffers full.

There were other places where a man could play a few cards and have a few drinks without fear of being found out, as long as he didn’t mind lowering himself some. Down on the muddy banks of the Trinity was Frogtown, filled with brothel shacks and shanties, and south of the railroad tracks was the Negro tent city called Freedman’s Town where even the law didn’t bother to go. But John Henry was only looking for a little distraction, not a whole different kind of life, and he couldn’t imagine himself in such surroundings.

So he kept his card playing to hands of solitaire or the occasional penny-ante poker game against the other residents of his boarding house, and spent his evenings writing letters to Mattie, telling her about his sailing voyage on the Gulf of Mexico, the crushed Oyster shell streets of Galveston Island, the sad circumstances of his Uncle Jonathan McKey’s cotton plantation, and his decision to settle in Dallas and go into partnership with Dr. Seegar. He told her about the Fair and his blue-ribbon winning display of dental work, his regular Sunday attendance at the First Methodist Church, and his occasional visits to the Dallas Temperance Union—not that she’d believe he’d turned temperance himself, but knowing that he was a man of the community would make her happy. He told her what a fine Southern town Dallas was, how there was a public outrage when a girlie show opened at the Variety Theater, and how the local fire brigade, good family men all, stood aside while the citizens of Dallas set fire to the place and joined in cheering as the theater burned to the ground. He even wrote to her about Belle Swink and the herds of pigs and cattle that crowded the dirt streets. But the one thing he didn’t tell her, could never tell her, was the real reason he had left home and couldn’t come back.

Her own letters came regularly, nearly every week, though he walked to the post office at the Depot almost daily in case she’d sent something extra. He’d gotten to be such a regular visitor there, in fact, that he was on a first name basis with the postmaster and several of the railroad employees, and they liked to fool with him, telling him there was nothing for him when there really was. Then they’d pull out his anticipated letter and laugh at how he’d tuck it quickly into his coat pocket, waiting until he was alone to read it. He wasn’t about to share his love letters with railroad men, for to him, they were love letters, though Mattie said little that was romantic. It was the fact that she kept writing so regularly and the things she wrote about that proved her affection. In every letter she mentioned something they had done together in days past, reminding him of the special friendship they had shared. Then she’d go on about what was happening in Atlanta, chatting away as though he were there in the room with her and could hear her every word. And every letter would end with the same gentle question: would he be coming home again soon? Would he be back in time for Christmas? Oh, how she would love to have his company for this Christmas, especially. . .

One year it would be, come Christmas, since Mattie’s father had died, taking ill with pneumonia in the middle of the coldest Georgia winter in memory. One year since John Henry had made a daring ride on icy roads, racing from Jonesboro to Atlanta to fetch the Catholic priest to give Uncle Rob his last rites. One year since he’d saved a man from Purgatory, only to find himself cast out of paradise and fighting perdition.

Of course, he couldn’t go home, though there was nothing he would like better, and his own Christmas would be spent with the Seegars at their new brick house on Ross Avenue. He was grateful for the invitation as he had nowhere else to go for the holiday, though he suspected it was mostly Lenora’s idea. And when the day arrived and he found his favorite peach cobbler for dessert along with the traditional pumpkin pie, he made a point of thanking Lenora for her thoughtfulness and she smiled and blushed and said he was most truly welcomed. But though he did, indeed, feel welcome in the Seegars home, being there for Christmas only made him remember the things he was missing: his own home and his own family, his country, his kin. And Mattie, always Mattie.

By the time the Christmas meal was done and the Christmas carols had been sung, John Henry was ready to be away from the Seegars’ fine new house that was filled with the old memories he’d carried in with him. But as he said his goodbyes and stepped out into the early December twilight, the winter chill of the prairie wind cut right through him, catching his breath and setting him off into a sudden fit of coughing.

It was a half-mile walk back to town, and even the trolley mule Belle Swink was taking Christmas night off and wasn’t around to offer him a ride, and the exercise left him wheezing, with his heart racing like it would never slow down. Damn Texas cold! he swore to himself. And wishing that he had more than a sip of whiskey left in the bottle tucked under his bed pillow, he stood in the dusky darkness considering. If he went back to his boarding house now, his coughing would surely disturb his landlady who was entertaining some family of her own. If he stopped into one of the nearby saloons just to buy a quick drink, someone might see him and pass the word to Dr. Seegar and cause him trouble with his employer.

Then he laughed at the thought. Who would see him in a saloon on Christmas night, anyhow? All the fine folk in Dallas were home by now, the members of the Methodist Church and even the Catholics and the Jews all safe and warm around their hearths. Only sports would be in a saloon on a night like this: gamblers, drinkers, men who didn’t have families around to care about them.

Like himself.

He turned his collar to the wind and headed toward Main Street where the saloons stayed open all night long.

Only the few downtown streets of Dallas were lit by gas, with the rest of the town being so dark one had to carry a lantern to see by. But against the winter darkness, the dim lights of Main Street seemed like a blaze, and he felt cheerier already just walking under their yellow glow.

His cheer continued as he pushed open the swinging doors of the Senate Saloon and was greeted by a fragrant cloud of cigar smoke and the lively music of an upright piano. And all at once, he felt at home, with the cigar smoke and the music mixing together to bring back bittersweet memories: his father, smelling of tobacco every night after supper, his mother laying graceful hands on the piano keys. And with those memories, he was home at last for Christmas, if only for an evening in a Dallas saloon.

It was only for one night, he reminded himself, as he found an empty seat at a poker table and joined in the game. Just one night of whiskey and poker, and once it was over he’d be back again to his proper and professional self. He was a dentist, after all, with a reputation to uphold, and not really a gambler like the other men at the table that Christmas night. But they were good company, easy with the wagers and a raucous joke, and happy to make John Henry feel like part of their society. It was a pleasure playing with them, and almost made him forget that he’d been melancholy just a few hours before.

But once the evening was over and he’d walked back to his boarding house in the thin light before dawn, the melancholy came flooding back. It wasn’t the start of a whiskey hangover coming on, though he would surely have one of those in the morning. It was something more powerful than liquor that he was lacking: it was the comfort and the camaraderie of the saloon, the elation of putting down wagers and picking up winnings. It was the games that he needed to keep his loneliness at bay, and he had to find a way to keep playing.