DENISON, 1874
THE TOWN ON THE ROLLING HILLS SOUTH OF THE RED RIVER WAS SO new that most of the inhabitants still lived in tents, drawing water from communal wells and cooking over open campfires. The only real business was the meat packing plant alongside the tracks of the Kansas & Texas Line Railway, and even the tracks were new, laid the year before when the K&T had planted Denison and contracted with the American & Texas Refrigerated Car Company to ship beef from there across the Indian Territory to markets in the east.
The closeness of the Indian Territory, only four miles north on the other side of the Red River, gave a thrill of danger to the place. For although the Five Civilized Tribes of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek, and Cherokee who occupied the land north of that part of Texas were generally peaceful, the Southern Plains tribes farther to the west were not. The Cheyenne and Comanche had refused to retreat to their Government ordered reservations, and the Army was fighting a war all along the Red River to keep them contained. As the booming of Denison proved, civilization was moving west and the savages must make way for it.
Denison looked more like adventure than civilization to John Henry, when he arrived that summer after the embarrassment of his trouble in Dallas. Though his arrest hadn’t even made the back pages of the Dallas Herald, somehow everybody knew about it anyway. It seemed to him that everywhere he went folks suddenly looked at him differently. Walking down Elm Street, he saw ladies to whom he used to tip his hat now cross to the other side of the street, pretending not to see him. Even the supposedly charitable members of the Dallas First Methodist Church shunned him, stepping aside as he walked into church two days after his bond hearing—and him only trying to set himself straight with God. Well, God was everywhere, so his mother had told him, and he could do his repenting just as well in Denison as in Dallas.
He still had no intention of trading his dental tools for a butcher’s knife, however. What brought him to Denison was the news that there were five small hotels along Main Street, three passable restaurants, and a twenty-four hour post office—and not a single dentist as of yet. So he packed up his things, left word at the Dallas County Bank that he was relocating elsewhere, and took the train north to Denison for another fresh start at being a professional man. And he was pleased to find, soon after his arrival, that the owner of the Alamo Hotel needed some dental work done and would be willing to trade a month’s rent for a couple of extractions, so all he needed was a paperboard sign hung in the window to announce that J.H. Holliday, Dentist was in business again.
But he only stayed in his hotel room dental office until mid-afternoon each day before turning his sign and heading down to Skiddy Street, the shallow ravine behind Main Street where most of the saloons and gambling dens were located. For although he’d sworn off Keno, he had no intention of giving up on other games of chance. Betting money on cards and watching them come up winners still gave him a thrill that drove away all his other worries.
Denison was a dark town by night as gas hadn’t yet come to that part of the country. The only illumination came from candlelight and kerosene oil, yet for John Henry, the darkness had something like a familiar feel to it. Valdosta had been dark at night, too, with no streetlights and surrounded by tall over-reaching pines that shadowed the moonlight. Even the smell of the place reminded him of Valdosta: a mix of wood smoke and outhouse and a green dampness from off the river. But where Valdosta’s dark nights were silent except for the sound of katydids chirping, Denison was raucous all night long. In the open-windowed heat of August and Indian summer, families said their prayers to the sound of dance hall pianos, and children were lullabied by the God-profaning curses of gamblers. And now and then, shots rang out in the darkness as some of the boys got out of hand, and Red Hall, the town marshal and former Texas Ranger, would step in to calm things down.
It was the darkness that brought John Henry his best, if not most pleasant patient—a butcher from Dallas who’d come to work at the slaughterhouse next to the meat packing plant. His name was Charlie Austin, a small man with a big opinion of himself, and he had better things in mind than butchering. Charlie wanted to be a saloonkeeper, pouring drinks across the bar in some fine establishment—not that there were any such places in Denison. He planned on going back to Dallas once he’d made some good money at the slaughterhouse, though first he’d have to pay a chunk of his earnings to John Henry.
“Damn Injuns!” Charlie said, when found his way to the dental chair after being assaulted outside one of Denison’s groggeries. He’d need several new teeth to replace the ones he’d lost and make himself presentable again; pricey work that the only dentist in town was happy to oblige.
“What makes you think it was Indians?” John Henry asked as he inspected the result of Charlie’s midnight run-in with an unseen assailant. If the butcher had been passable-looking before the attack, he wasn’t anymore with his torn and swollen lip and toothless grimace. “Did you hear any whoopin’ or hollerin’?”
“Didn’t hear nothin’ once I got hit on the head,” Charlie said, whistling through the bloodied space in his mouth. “Who else would slip up so quiet and slip off without nobody seein’? Comanche braves, mor’n likely, scoutin’ the town. And likely back across the river by now. Colbert’s too damn easy with who he lets on his ferry boat.”
John Henry knew the man Charlie was talking about, as he’d taken Ben Franklin Colbert’s ferry across the river himself just to say he’d been in the Indian Territory, though there was nothing much to see but more empty land and switch grass and the flat waters of the Red River. The Indians weren’t allowed off their reservation and generally kept themselves to their own towns out of sight. But white men could enter to trade or cross over to Kansas or Missouri, and for them, Colbert kept a general store on the south side of the river near the ferry landing. He called his place the “First and Last Chance”: first chance to buy a drink coming down from the Territory and last chance to buy a drink before crossing into the Territory, as it was against the law to sell alcohol to the Indians. But the Indians got the liquor somehow, just the same.
“But the wild Indians aren’t even on this part of the river,” John Henry said reasonably. “It’s Choctaw near here. The Comanche and Cheyenne are up in the Panhandle fightin’ the Army. I doubt they’d bother comin’ this far. What’ve we got here that Indians would want?”
“Beef, I’d say,” Charlie Austin replied with a grunt. “They’re starvin’ half the time, now they’ve lost their buffalo huntin’ grounds. Let ‘em starve, damned red heathens, knockin’ me on the head!”
Which brought John Henry back to the real question at hand:
“So what did these mystery assailants take from you, other than your good looks? You didn’t happen to have any beef on you, I reckon.”
“Just my poker winnin’s, damn ‘em,” Charlie said, wiping a drool of bloody spittle from his mouth. “Money I was gonna use to buy me a whore for the night. Ought to pay Colbert to take me over to the Indian Territory so’s I can use a squaw instead. Teach ‘em all a lesson.”
Though John Henry shared some of Charlie Austin’s distrust of the Indians, he didn’t think raping their women would solve anything. That kind of lesson might just bring on the Indian attacks Charlie was already imagining and overwhelm Denison’s little police force of Marshal Hall and his three deputies. The police were mostly for show, not staving off Indians, dressed as they were in their brass-buttoned blue uniforms and wide Panama hats, and spending their time breaking up saloon fights or collecting the $5 per week license fees from the brothels.
“So can you fix me up?” Charlie asked, as John Henry finished the exam and wiped his soiled hands on a waiting piece of toweling. “Can’t be ‘Champagne Charlie Austin’ lookin’ like this. That’s the name I’m plannin’ to use in Dallas once I get myself a saloon job there: ‘Champagne Charlie,’ just like the vaudeville song. Suits me, don’t you think?”
He could fix Charlie’s teeth for a price, but it would take more than fancy dentistry to turn Charlie Austin into anything finer than corn liquor.
He wrote to Mattie, of course, telling her that he had moved his practice to booming Denison, though he didn’t mention the embarrassing circumstances of his leaving Dallas. Mattie would be distressed to know that he’d been arrested, even for something as inconsequential as betting money on a gambling game. So it was good to have a patient like Charlie Austin who needed several visits and some careful dentistry to straighten out the mess of his teeth, and giving John Henry something interesting to say in regards to his professional life. Since being fired by Dr. Seegar and not finding much work on his own in Dallas, his letters of the past months had been mostly travelogue, avoiding the subject of how he spent his days. But although he chose to keep some parts of his life from her, he still found that he could talk to Mattie more easily than he’d ever been able to talk to anyone else, and for the hour or so that he spent writing each letter, recounting the colorful atmosphere of the Texas frontier and the fine work he was doing in Denison, he didn’t feel so very far away from her.
It was one thing doing expensive dentistry, however, and another thing entirely getting paid for his efforts, as he discovered too late. For once Charlie Austin had teeth in his mouth again, he suddenly forgot that he still owed money to his dentist—John Henry’s fault, partly, for allowing Charlie to pay for the work in installments as he collected his own pay from the slaughterhouse. And though John Henry didn’t want to go collecting the money at gunpoint like some swindled gambler, he didn’t want to give his services away for free, either. But before he could call on Marshal Hall for assistance with the matter, Charlie Austin was gone, taking his new teeth and leaving John Henry unpaid and unsatisfied.
Charlie’s skipping town was just the start of the trouble, for as the sultry Texas summer cooled at last into fall, the noise of Denison disappeared, silenced by the same depression that had sucked the life out of the rest of the country. The American & Texas Refrigerated Car Company, whose eight-acre meat packing plant beside the railroad tracks had been Denison’s major industry, lost its financial investors and went bankrupt. There would be no more big cattle drives into Denison, no thousands of head of livestock loaded onto the railcars or thousands of pounds of slaughtered Texas beef shipped out on the Kansas & Texas line. And without the cattle business, there was little to keep Denison alive, and it quickly turned from the last boomtown of Texas to yet another victim of the Panic of 1873.
The personality of the place changed almost overnight as the thousands of single young men who had come to work on the railroad or at the slaughterhouse drifted off to greener pastures. By Christmas, the only folks remaining in town were the homesteaders and the depot workers, as well as a few sporting men and bawdy house girls, though most of the bawdy houses had closed down, too. And maybe because of the sudden quiet, or because of the sudden lack of whorehouse license fees, even Marshal Red Hall packed his bags and left Denison behind. The fact that even the law wasn’t interested in Denison anymore only proved the point that the town was drying up.
There was no reason to stay in a town that couldn’t support a dentist. So by New Year’s Eve, John Henry was back in Dallas in time to watch the fireworks over the Trinity River and the First Texas Artillery shooting off cannonades from the fairgrounds, the festivities seeming more a celebration of the old year ending than of the new one just coming in, considering how bad 1874 had been for most folks. And seeing the old year go, John Henry had hopes that his own hard times of the past few years were finally behind him.
It was a sign of good luck and better times to come when he started the new year by opening the Dallas Herald and finding Charlie Austin, as the advertisement for the saloon at the new St. Charles Hotel read: Champagne Charlie is a rollicking fellow who fixes up the smiles and hands them out smilingly. What the advertisement didn’t mention was that it was John Henry who’d put Champagne Charlie’s smile back together again and who was still owed more than he’d been paid.
The saloon took up the entire first floor of the St. Charles Hotel, and it was already crowded with cowboys and farmers up from Cleburne and Tyler and Waxahachie when John Henry stepped in out of the January cold still coughing from the smoke of the train trip and a little foggy from his New Year’s Eve drinking of the night before, but looking forward to collecting on that Denison debt. If he were to try his hand at dentistry in Dallas again, he’d need some money to get himself set up in business, and Charlie’s payment would help.
But Charlie Austin didn’t look like he was in the mood for discussing finances as he muttered to himself and poured the drinks.
“Cowhands are one thing,” Charlie was saying to one of the saloon girls as John Henry approached him through the crowd. “They’ve been around some at least. But these farmers, they don’t even know how to handle the liquor. Serve ‘em and souse ‘em, that’s all I do, then call the bouncer to throw ‘em out if they don’t puke on the floor first, which I have to clean up.”
“Howdy, Charlie,” John Henry said affably. “I see you found your true callin’.”
Charlie looked up at him with surprise, then narrowed his eyes. “What are you doin’ in Dallas?”
“Same as everybody else, I reckon, enjoyin’ the festivities. Thought I’d stop by and have a visit with my old friend from Denison. At least, I thought we were friends. You didn’t even bother sayin’ goodbye when you left town.”
“I got a job offer,” Charlie said gruffly. “Didn’t see as that was any of your business.”
“I disagree, since it was your job offer that hurt my business. You owe me some money, Charlie, and I mean to collect.”
“Go to hell,” Charlie said.
“I well may, someday,” John Henry replied, “but there’s no cause for angry words just now. I only want what’s rightfully mine. And considering it’s partly my work that got you this job, I’m probably entitled to more than what you owe. But I’m willin’ to settle for what’s on your tab.”
“Well, I haven’t got it. The slaughterhouse closed up before makin’ the last payroll on account of the Refrigerated Car Company goin’ bankrupt and not payin’ them. So take a number and you can get your money when I get mine.”
“I won’t be dissuaded, Charlie,” John Henry said, standing his ground. “It’s the principle of the thing . . .”
But Charlie Austin had a laugh at that, showing off his new teeth and saying to the crowd of rowdies around him: “Did you hear that, boys? This man’s got principles!” Then he pulled something from beneath his apron and said: “Well, I’ve got a pistol. Let’s see who wins.”
He should have left the saloon then and come back later when things were quieter. He should have left and never come back at all. But there was something infuriating about being laughed at like that, at gunpoint and in front of a whole saloon, and him only trying to make things right. And with that righteous indignation rising in him, John Henry pulled the Colt’s Navy revolver from his own pocket and leveled it at Charlie Austin.
“Pay me for my work or lose it,” he said, taking aim at Charlie’s fading smile.
“What the hell are you doin’?” Charlie asked in surprise. “Customers aren’t allowed firearms in the saloon, you know that!”
“I’m not a customer. I’m a debt collector. Or the angel of death, maybe. You choose.”
He cocked the hammer of his revolver and the pistol in Charlie’s hand wavered.
“You plannin’ to kill me over a dentist bill?” Charlie asked, incredulous.
“Not yet,” John Henry replied. Then he took aim at Charlie’s hand and fired a shot that sent the bartender’s pistol flying and discharging into the board ceiling.
Charlie screamed, the saloon girls screamed, then a gruff voice commanded:
“Drop it! You boys are both under arrest.”
Of course, there were police patrolling the saloons on the day after New Year’s Eve. The police were always around when they weren’t wanted.
“Me?” Charlie cried as the deputy stepped forward to take them both into custody. “Why me? He’s the one did the shootin’. He could have killed me!”
“I could have, if I’d wanted to,” John Henry said under his breath, as he grudgingly turned his pistol over to the officer. “But you’re not worth repentin’ over, Charlie. And you’re sure as hell not worth goin’ to jail for.”
As for getting paid for his work, that was probably never going to happen. The Dallas City Jail had been uncomfortable lodgings when he’d spent a long spring week there the year before. But with the bitter winter wind of a Blue Norther blowing in through the unplastered chinks in the log walls, it was dangerous as well. A man could catch his death of chill there, even if he’d had strong lungs before he started. But John Henry had already been through two winters of pneumonia and taken a glancing blow from the Yellow Fever, and his health wasn’t up to spending any more time in jail.
So it was with surprise and relief that he learned he had a visitor the morning after his arrest. He’d been hoping that Thomas Miers, the friendly liquor dealer, would hear of his predicament and come to bail him out again. It wasn’t Miers who came to help him that January afternoon, however, but Dr. John Seegar.
“You would have done well to have taken my advice and left Dallas permanently, Dr. Holliday,” Seegar said, and John Henry was too amazed at the sight of him to disagree. After that unfortunate incident with the Fort Worth gamblers, he’d never expected Dr. Seegar to speak to him again, let alone come to see him in jail.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Sir,” he said, reaching his hand through the cell bars to Dr. Seegar, but the older man just glared at him.
“Don’t bother thankin’ me. I’m not here to pay your bail. As far as I’m concerned, you can rot in this jail cell until your trial comes up. I’m just here to make sure that when you are tried, you get acquitted. That’s why I’ve hired you a lawyer, one of the best in Dallas. Name’s J.M. McCoy, a personal friend of mine.”
John Henry caught his breath. Having Seegar put up money for bail would have been one thing. Having him pay to hire a lawyer was a gesture he couldn’t comprehend.
“But I don’t understand, Sir. Why would you do such a thing for me?”
“It’s not for you, Dr. Holliday. I wouldn’t waste a penny on your behalf. I’m doin’ this for my own reputation. Because if you are convicted, everyone will have somethin’ to say about my choice of professional partners, and I haven’t worked all these years to build a practice just to have your criminal behavior destroy it. Well? Aren’t you even interested in knowin’ how I found out about your incarceration?”
“I reckon someone told you . . .” John Henry said with a shrug.
“Someone told all of Dallas,” Seegar replied sharply. Then he snapped open the newspaper he’d carried with him, holding it up to the bars for John Henry to see. “It’s all right here on the front page of the Dallas Herald,” and he read the awful news aloud:
“Dr. Holliday and Mr. Austin, a saloon-keeper, relieved the monotony of the noise of fire-crackers by taking a couple of shots at each other yesterday afternoon. The cheerful note of the peaceful six-shooter is heard once more among us. Both shooters were arrested.
“So much for your reputation, Dr. Holliday,” Seegar went on, sliding the newspaper through the bars to John Henry. “You have managed to make a fool of yourself, and that is a real shame. Because you are a fine dentist, the best clinician I ever saw. But you are also one sorry excuse for a man.”
“But you don’t understand,” John Henry said. “I was just collectin’ on a debt. Charlie was my patient, up in Denison . . .”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses, Dr. Holliday. I just want you to get out of town before you cause me any more embarrassment or my daughter any more heartache.”
“Your daughter?” John Henry asked, looking up from the paper. “What’s Lenora got to do with this?”
“Nothin’,” Dr. Seegar replied heavily. “Or rather, she should have nothin’ to do with this. But for some reason, she still thinks you hung the moon, and learnin’ of your arrest will break her heart. But I don’t guess you’d understand about that, bein’ so heartless yourself. My lawyer will be by to see you in the mornin’.”
But he wasn’t heartless as Dr. Seegar had said. For if he were, his heart wouldn’t be paining him the way it was now, knowing he’d hurt little Lenora again.
John Milton McCoy, Dr. Seegar’s lawyer, had come to Dallas from Indiana just two years before as a grief-stricken young widower looking for a fresh start. But his mourning was short-lived when a friendly correspondence with his late wife’s best friend blossomed into love, and John Milton found himself a married man again. And though he vowed to his new bride that he would use his legal profession to help civilize the plains of Texas, the economic depression had forced him to compromise his vow a little. With money short and collections slow in coming in, he was obliged to take whatever cases offered themselves—even that of a drunken dentist who had taken a couple of wing shots at a local barkeep named Austin.
But if J.M. McCoy had qualms about taking on his case, John Henry had more doubts about Lawyer McCoy. Though he was a genial enough man, rosy-cheeked and round about the middle, McCoy hadn’t had much experience in the trial setting. He practiced real estate law, trusts and guardianships and such, and John Henry was going to need a good criminal lawyer to get him acquitted of the charges made against him— Assault with Intent to Commit Murder.
It was all nonsense, of course. If he’d meant to kill Charlie Austin, he could have done it easily enough. He’d only meant to knock the gun from Charlie’s hand and put a scare into him, and he’d succeeded on both counts. But knowing he was innocent of the charge didn’t ease his mind any. As his uncle William McKey had told him once, there was a difference between what a man could prove and what he got accused of, and oft times the accusation was all it took to ruin a man’s good name. Though if the jury decided John Henry was guilty as accused, he’d have more than just his good name to worry about. The penalty for attempted murder in the state of Texas was two to twenty years in the State Prison—a prospect that left him downright scared.
So while Lawyer McCoy put together the case, interviewing witnesses and visiting the shooting scene, John Henry spent two sleepless weeks in the drafty Dallas City Jail waiting to see what would come of it. And by the time his trial came up on the frosty morning of January 28th, he was worn out from worry and lack of sleep, and coughing from the cold so hard that he kept interrupting the judge during the proceedings. But that was the one bright light of the entire affair: Lawyer McCoy had managed to get his case before a new judge in town, one who hadn’t heard of John Henry’s earlier arrest and arraignment, so at least that much hadn’t gone against him.
For all John Milton McCoy’s corpulent geniality, however, he turned out to be a formidable attorney. He knew the law and knew how to explain it to a jury, and when the panel of twelve men returned from their sequestered room, they brought a happy verdict with them: In the case of The State of Texas vs J.H. Holliday, the defendant was found not guilty.
It was the best news he’d heard since coming to Texas.
He still had his dental equipment, which he’d used in Dallas and then taken on the train to Denison and back, so he set up again in a cheap rented room and hung out his sign, hoping to draw business. But he still had the cough that had come on him in jail, as well, and a weariness that wouldn’t let go. Most days, he was too tired to do more than a few hours of work, and some days he didn’t bother opening his door at all, staying in bed to sleep off the lingering effects of what was surely another close brush with pneumonia. Come spring, he told himself, he’d be feeling better, once the winter chill had lifted and the days started to warm again. Come spring, he’d be back on his feet and busy at his practice again.
But when March came with balmy days and April followed with signs of an early summer, his weariness remained and his work continued to suffer. He was making enough for living expenses and not much more, and the last thing he wanted to spend money on was a visit to the doctor for something as inconsequential as a cough and a little tiredness, until one morning when he woke with a tearing pain in his chest and a strangling gasping for breath and felt something like vomit rising up in his throat. But as bent over the china bowl on his washstand he saw that it wasn’t vomit, but blood coming up, bright red and foamy and filled with pus.
“Oh God!” he whispered hoarsely, with hardly enough breath to say the words, “don’t let me be sick, please don’t let me be sick!”
Then he started coughing and vomiting again, until he couldn’t talk, or pray, or even think anymore.
The doctor sat behind a dark oak desk in his medical office, staring down at the papers in front of him and saying nothing at all. Behind him, a tall apothecary case was filled with medicine bottles, amber and blue glass reflecting the golden afternoon light that filled the little room. He took a deep breath, then looked up at John Henry who sat across the desk from him.
“When did these symptoms first start?” he asked.
“A few years back, in Georgia. I had a little spell then and another one when I first got to Texas. But nothin’ like this . . .”
“And when did the bleeding start again?”
“Mornin’ before last. I woke up feelin’ sick, coughin’ up blood.”
The doctor pushed his chair back and stood slowly, turning to face the apothecary case.
“There’s a few medications we could try, of course,” he said, more to himself than to John Henry, “remedies that have some claim to usefulness. Most of them are just mixtures of whiskey, but they help with the pain, at least. And there are some medical men who claim a dry climate can be beneficial. Colorado is becoming quite popular with victims . . .”
“But it’s just the pneumonia again, isn’t it? It’s just the pneumonia?”
The doctor shook his head and turned back to face him. “No, Dr. Holliday. I don’t believe it’s pneumonia.”
“Then—what?”
“Consumption,” the doctor said lightly, as though the word had no weight at all, no heavy burden of death to drag it down. “Pulmonary consumption, likely the acute form. It’s a—fairly common ailment of the lungs . . .”
“I know about consumption,” John Henry said quickly. “My mother died of it. But she was always weak, especially after the War. Surely, you’re mistaken . . .”
But the doctor went on as though John Henry had not spoken at all.
“We are still unclear about the mode of transmission, but the symptoms are quite well known. There is lack of appetite, loss of weight at first . . .”
“I’ve always been thin,” he objected.
“Then there’s the quickened pulse, the tiredness you’ve described, the night sweats. Then the coughing starts, just in the morning at first, but getting worse with time until the patient starts to bring up blood from the lungs.”
“But I’ve had the pneumonia . . .”
“The blood comes from cavitary lesions in the lungs, areas of infection that swell, burst, bleed, then scar over. Eventually, the entire surface of the lung is involved, scarred, leaving little viable tissue left for respiration. The patient . . .” The doctor stopped, cleared his throat, started again. “The patient—dies of asphyxiation, usually delirious at the end. There is no known cure. It is—always fatal.”
“But I’m just a little sick,” John Henry said. “I’m a little tired, that’s all. If you can just give me somethin’ to clear up this cough so I can sleep . . .”
“I wish you had come to see me sooner, Dr. Holliday, when I might have been able to do something. I wish you hadn’t waited so long . . .”
The doctor’s words ran out into a long silence.
“I can’t be dyin’,” John Henry said, as though arguing could change things. “I’m only twenty-three years old! I’ve just started out. I’ve got plans for my life . . .”
“You can still have plans. You’ll have years yet ahead of you, if you take care of yourself. Consumption is a slow illness.”
“A slow death, you mean?”
“We all die, son. It’s how you live that counts, no matter how long you have. And if there’s anything at all that I can do . . .”
“You can go to hell!” John Henry said, voice shaking as he fought against angry, anguished tears. “You can go to hell!”
His father had taught him responsibility, drilling it into him from childhood, and only because of that training did he bother showing up in court for the one legal affair he still had to attend to: his trial for the year-old Keno arrest.
It was the first case heard that morning of April 13th, and he didn’t even go to the expense of hiring Lawyer McCoy to represent him. He was guilty of the gambling and pled such, and took his ten-dollar fine without making a comment—though the Dallas County Sheriff had a word of caution for him as he received the payment for the fine and court costs.
“You ought to have a doctor take a listen to that cough,” the Sheriff remarked. “Sounds downright unpleasant.”
John Henry didn’t even reply.
The Dallas First Methodist Church held choir practice on Tuesday afternoons, the sound of the singing carrying out through the open chapel doors like an invitation, but John Henry hadn’t come for the music. He was looking for a miracle, for some sign that what the doctor had told him wasn’t true. His mother had taught him to believe in miracles, in signs and wonders and the mercies of God. And as he took off his hat and found a seat on a wooden pew, the words of the old hymn seemed to ring right through him:
Depth of mercy, can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
Can by God his wrath forbear
The chief of sinners spare?
Salvation had always been waiting for him, willing to give him time—time for remorse, time to repent, time to sow his wild oats and wander a bit. Even after his greatest sin, God could be forgiving if only he sought forgiveness with a broken and contrite heart. That was the Gospel his mother had taught him and that he had always believed. That was the legacy she had left him in her testimony written down by the minister before she died: God was good, in spite of trials; God was loving, in spite of losses. God heard each heartfelt prayer and answered accordingly.
But though John Henry had repented, though he had done his best to change his life and live according to God’s plan with only a few minor failings, he hadn’t earned salvation, but damnation. He had killed a boy and God was punishing him for it, a life for a life. There was no mercy, only justice, and the Lord would have His vengeance.
He knew all about the consumption. He’d watched his mother die of it, the pain-wracked body and horrible bloody cough that tore her apart and wasted her away before his very eyes. His beloved mother, taken from him so young. His own life, being taken too soon. How could he have faith in such an unfaithful, vengeful God?
“Damn you!” he cursed, and the choir’s director turned around and stared. “Damn you all! Damn your heaven and your hell and your pitiful, painful earth! Damn you all!”
Then, before anyone could ask him to quiet his blasphemous words, he rose and strode from the church, turning his back on the music and the mercies of God both.
There were other places where comfort came easier. Dallas was full of saloons and he would visit them all, getting so roaring drunk that he couldn’t feel a thing: not pain, not despair, not the anger that was raging inside of him. Damn the whole world for giving him life at all! Tonight, he just wanted to bury himself in a bottle of whiskey and never wake up again.
And then came a faint memory of another confused and drunken night when he had stood in the dark with Mattie and recited Hamlet’s soliloquy:
“. . . To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep . . .”
To die . . .
Everybody died sooner or later. He didn’t have to wait for the consumption to torture him down to his grave when there were other, more pleasant, ways to go. How much liquor did it take for a man to drink himself to death? How long before he stopped thinking altogether?
He ordered a bottle of whiskey and poured his tumbler full.