Sixteen and a Thousand Moments
Billy had a habit of walking in just before I closed up. He was certainly an outlaw, a vagrant of his time, but he never was the kind to threaten me to keep open – and his charm was all the persuasion I needed. Generally he didn't come around unless he was fixing to skin out in the next few minutes, so I put up with it.
Tonight began like it had a million times before: he dragged himself in and shut the door behind him, giving my empty bar a casual but cautious glance before coming to sit directly in front of me where I cleaned the glasses. Clink after clink, I set them down in a straight row before him, towel in my hand and my eyes hard as I watched him. I tried to keep my actions deliberate and loud to let him know just how frustrated I was of his troubling me.
The Kid, his shaggy hair falling out of his eyes as he glanced up at me, like he hadn't noticed I was there before. Billy the Kid winked one of those infamously clear blue eyes. "Howdy Maria. You're lookin' prettier today."
I made a nasty face at him, though his comment made me subconsciously push my graying dark hair behind my ears. "Don't tell me, Chivato," I greeted. "Your boys are too tired to come in and get drunk enough to ride on with ya, so you're gonna drink for 'em." A wry smile played at my lips, and I set a glass down before him, planting my fist on the tattered material that fell over the curve of my hip. "You're such a good friend."
"Don't tease me now, Senorita," Billy sing-songed and picked the cup in his hand, making little eddies in the air with it as if daring me to fill it up. "Come on, beautiful…" he grinned rakishly up at me, and every time he blinked his pale lashes would caress his dirty cheek, dragging my attention to some suspicious looking white streaks that trailed almost down to his chin and vanished into rough smears. Tear streaks. I resisted the urge to ask the boy devil why. "Fill her up…"
I rolled my eyes and shook a coffee-colored finger before his nose. "You're a flirt, Chivato. Not a good livin'." He twirled his finger over the rim of the glass over and over, making that boyishly cheerful face at me, as I turned sideways to face the bottle cabinets. "What're ya in the mood for?"
"Tonight? Brandy. Brandy till I float." Billy let the glass drop to the counter with a clatter that was magnified by the silence, and he slid it gracefully in my direction. As I removed the liquor I noticed how his expression changed; like a mask falling off an actor's face. It was like night to day. His brow was heavily drawn, and he had found great interest in his inattentively playing fingers. The tears, the deep thought – Billy the Kid clearly had something on his mind he just wanted to forget. Enough something to force tears out of him, tears like blood flowing from a gunshot wound.
The usual flirty mask was working overtime this night. One having first met Billy the Kid would have bought into the quick smiles, spirited laughs and twinkling eyes, but I had learned that trick five long years ago. When he had first come to Old Fort Sumner a scared little gringo boy, sixteen and a thousand moments young.
I reached above to the cabinets and removed the brandy bottle, always in supply. Men around here never came in just to warm up. I unscrewed the cap and set it beside his glass, waiting a moment before giving him what he came for.
"Why brandy?"
"It's cold out, where've ya been?" He asked jokingly, and I just held his glass down while I poured.
"Where're the boys tonight?" I asked casually, not wanting to really pry into his current, poorly hidden mood. I tried to lighten it by smiling as I filled his glass with the sharp brassy liquid. "Where's that Rudabaugh fella? He always appreciates good whisky. And Josiah – "
"Doc's dead."
The neck of the bottle slipped through my dry fingers and clattered onto the table, but not long enough for anything to spill. I quickly recovered it, but my wide eyes never left his nonchalant, wind tanned face. He didn't seem about to collapse with grief, he didn't seem surprised, and he didn't seem to be very upset at all. I composed myself and pushed the glass in his direction. He flicked those blues at me and muttered a thank you.
"When." I almost stated, rather than asked.
"Few weeks ago," was Billy's reply, and he cupped a delicate fingered hand around the glass and swished the alcohol around in it, watching it dance around the bottom in circle after circle. Billy's eyes would narrow and relax, narrow and relax, as if the spinning liquid played the events out for him behind his gaze. "Stinkin' Springs. The good ol' keeper of the peace blew his guts out with about twenty slugs." Billy stopped moving his drink and brought it to his pale lips. "He wanted to make the first break."
My bones felt uneasy beneath my sun aged skin, and for a long while neither of us spoke. Josiah Scurlock had come into my eating-house many a night, and though we seldom spoke, I had always enjoyed his company. He seemed to be the only decent thing this whirlwind of gunfire, poverty and corruption had ever produced. His friends had always known he wasn't cut out for the life Billy wanted him to lead, not at heart. Josiah wasn't a rustler, but an outlawed poet, a husband and a father.
Billy, I think, believed this as well.
Doc had been one of his brothers, and I didn't know what to say, except to maybe ask for the extent of the damage. My answer was a half laugh of broken self-pity, and a brief glance from beneath strings of dirty hair.
"Chavez…they finally got him a few hours ago." He told me simply, as if he were describing the weather outside my cracked windows. Billy took a big swallow of brandy into his mouth, letting it slosh over his tongue and down his throat before finishing. "And Hendry won't talk. He's back at Beaver's. Dave scrambled over the border like the rat he always was. Tommy took a bullet about a day before Doc did."
"You seem so calm." I told him, honestly unable to say anything else. Billy was surprisingly calm, quiet – saddened but ready to move onward. I never knew the Kid to dwell too long on the past. He always looked for new things, new ideas. Always to the future. But Billy always felt every mistake he made, and I was a fool to ask if he didn't.
"I done my cryin', Maria," he said with a tip of his glass and a nod of his weary head. "More'n you'll ever know. I done my crying. More'll do me no good." He downed the last of his brandy, and shook it at me for a refill. Without thinking, I complied.
"I, eh…" I was unsure what to say. "I guess you're happy to be a freeman again." I slid the glass back to him, and leaned my elbow on the counter. "You were gonna stretch there, Kid. You should be thankin' your lucky star."
"Me?" Billy snorted. "Nah, I knew I'd make it outta there."
At that I smiled, and reached over to ruffle his dirty hair. I felt bits of sand in the strands, and the wind had made his hair dry between my fingers. I withdrew my hand and drummed my fingers on the counter absently as I spoke. "None of us thought you would be there long, Chivato. Never expected to see Billy the Kid six feet under."
Billy raised his glass to me. "Here's to your faith, then." He said, and I watched him drink: he tilted his head back and poured it all into his mouth, closing his eyes tiredly for a moment as it slid down his throat. Billy set the glass back down, and kept his small hands tight around it. His bony knuckles moved beneath dirt patched skin. He gazed at the empty glance in heavy silence, his brows drawing together and his apple colored lips curling tightly into one another.
The boy could charm a snake with the slightest crack of a smile, and even when he was deep in thought he still looked like he might never age a day. I offered to fill his glass again, but he did not seem to hear a word I said.
"Maria?" Billy whispered in a dry throat, his voice hoarse and his intense, bulgy blue eyes directed toward me. I frowned at this sudden change, but all he said was, "I had a bad dream last night."
"A bad dream last night?"
"And the night before." Billy admitted quietly, and though he seemed embarrassed by the sound of it in his own voice, I heard the tremor of a childish fear. Those large eyes blinked at me, and I saw a boy afraid of the dark. "And the night before that. And the night before that night…and all the nights since Doc was gunned down."
"The same dream?" I asked carefully, straightening myself up and tossing my long braid behind my shoulders. "What do you dream about, Chivato?"
Billy offered only a single shouldered shrug, and he pointed to his glass. I fought the urge to roll my eyes and reached over, holding the heavy brandy bottle in one hand as I poured. He watched intently, concentrating on the flow of the reddish brandy into the shallow glass. He nodded his thanks, and I set the bottle down, waiting impatiently for an explanation. I repeated my question.
"Well, ma'am, I don't rightly know." he began, tilting his head to study his brandy as if it was something suddenly new and striking. Billy's tense voice had lost its edge almost completely, and he had fallen back into the disguise of "the kid", the charming dandy in wolf's clothing. He glanced sideways at me. "It's all dark around me, and I know I'm layin' on my back. I feel hard planks under my back, and the heels of my boots. The air above me is cold." He sipped his drink; two long swallows before exhaling through his nose. "There aint a damn thing around me, nothin. But I know that – " Billy shook his head, his silvery bangs falling into his eyes.
He sipped his drink again, and looked about ready to stop talking and close in on himself.
I tried to urge him on. "You know what?" Billy sighed, and raked his hand through his shaggy hair. He shrugged weary shoulders, and I hesitantly gave his elbow a gentle prod with the tip of my forefinger. "Everything is dark, nothing is around. You know what?"
"I know I shouldn't be afraid," he told me, simply, and shrugged again. "I know that I'll be all right, that the darkness'll be over soon. I know it. But I'm so afraid I can't even reason with myself." Billy lowered his voice, and averted his eyes from mine. He frowned at the counter. "I'm alone and afraid. What do you think it means?"
And he looked at me fully, his youthful face searching mine for answers, and his blue eyes were lost. My heart hammered away in my chest, but even in the heavy silence I found my lips forming a smile.
"It means you're like everyone else, Chivato," I arched a brow at him, and with my words and smile I saw strain and distress lift from him like an dust cloud in the afternoon sky. "You're afraid of the dark."
Billy gave a hearty laugh at that, and still his eyes sparkled like glowing embers. He looked to his unfinished drink, and his laugh faded into a slow smile. "I never liked the dark." he said.
"Neither did I." I said, and one of my hands found their way to his glass and managed to take it from him without protest. The glass I set somewhere on the counter behind me, and when I turned to face Billy again he probably half expected me to point toward the door. "Go on, Chivato. It's late."
"Yes ma'am," he said politely, though he only folded his hands beneath his chin and looked up at me with a grin of white teeth that contrasted against his grimy, tanned skin. I motioned for him to be on his way, and he made a disappointed noise in the back of his throat, slowly getting to his feet and scraping the chair legs along the bottom of the floor as he pushed it under the counter.
He moved to the door without a sway in his pace, so I was glad he wasn't too drunk. Before he went out the door he looked back at me. Billy's pale hair fell across his ash-smudged forehead, and he frowned thoughtfully in my direction. "I might go to Canada." he said, with a nod in the direction of North as if he somehow saw his road splayed out gloriously before him. Billy shrugged. "Prolly safer than New Mexico," his voice turned soft. Nostalgic. "But I'll miss her."
I raised both dark brows. "Your last ride?"
"Nah," he licked his lips in anticipation of what lay ahead, leaning on the open door and letting the drafts of cold air come in. Through my windows came no light; dawn was hours away from rising. Billy folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes out the open door, against the chill, and bit his bottom lip. He spoke around it. "Besides, games finished. My fights over, I just gotta make a livin." He looked over to me with a wink and a smile, stroking his smooth chin with his forefinger. "Ah think I got a beard comin'. They won't call me the Kid no more."
I snorted a laugh. "Leave some glory left in the west, Chivato." I said richly, and waved him on again. "Go on, get some sleep. I reckon you've got a long ride ahead of ya."
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." he agreed, quietly. Billy raised a hand. "I'll poke my head in before I ride out tomorrow. Thanks for the brandy. This cold aint nothin' now!" He grinned and laughed heartily when I made a face at him, and with one more wave the door closed. Billy was gone, and I never saw him again after that night.
A few hours after our parting a single shot had shattered Fort Sumner's silence, and the late hours of the next morning I was told that Billy the Kid was dead. He had been shot and killed by Pat Garret in Pete Maxwell's bedroom. Billy had been unarmed, and he died alone in the dark.
It only occurred to me, when Paulita Maxwell told me the news, that Billy had dreamed of his death. He had a warning, and I should have seen it. I suppose it doesn't matter either way, if death was coming for William H. Bonney that night then there was none who could have prevented it.
As much as I, and all of Fort Sumner, would miss him I couldn't help but think back to what he had told me. Billy said he knew he would be all right, despite the darkness and fear. I hoped it was true, and more so did I hope that William H. Bonney's troubles were over.
His was a voice I would never hear again, but it just might have been better that way. Billy had told me that the game was finished.
His fight was at last over, and he was moving on.