“James Clary.”
“You going to open me up?”
“If your fever goes down. If you live long enough.”
Siringo had a week’s beard. A century’s lines. He said, “Well, you be careful in there.”
“I will,” said Clary.
“You keep your eyes open.” Siringo started to laugh—he seemed onto a vein of comedy. “Don’t take out nothing I need, amigo.”
“You rest now, Mr. Siringo.”
Siringo nodded. His breathing guttered like flame. He seemed near lapsing into either sleep or madness, but he managed another quiet laugh saying, “I got a burly old heart—you remember not to nick it, understand?” Then a pain got him and he swore at it, shouting in a blistered voice. Clary shook a bottle onto a cloth and I turned my face away while the room grew quiet.
“How well do you know him?” Clary asked.
“Not well at all.”
“Who is Glen Dobie?”
“The man he was pursuing when he was shot.”
Clary chuckled at my caution. “That much I see—I mean, who is Glen Dobie that this old boy is so hard after him?”
“They have a grudge,” I replied.
Clary put a hand on the plaster wall—I think he would’ve tipped over otherwise. “I must have some rest,” he said.
“I’ll sit here with him awhile.”
“Would you do that? Since you know him?”
I nodded.
“I had a young man and two nurses. They went out on the wagons.”
“It’s all right.”
Clary bent down and looked closely at Siringo’s eyes and listened to his breathing. “If he wakes in a frenzy, come get me. Don’t try and dose him yourself.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“I guess you wouldn’t.” Clary lifted a muslin curtain and went into the adjoining room. I heard a reserved sigh and the clink of a decanter. It seemed only moments later he was snoring. His snores were low and delicate—he was a particular man, even sleeping.
14
That is how I came to be Siringo’s keeper—I would say his nurse, only I served him little except as company. I suppose I felt partially responsible for his condition, though his pursuit of Glendon was his own choice. For two full days he was on precarious ground—he would wake and carry on, lucid a small percentage of the time. When he roared his gibberish the boardinghouse residents cowered in the hallways, but then for minutes together he might speak with urgent exactitude as though narrating a preposterous memoir. He revealed many pieces of his life, including an account of his first meeting with Darlys DeFoe that made me blush to the eyeballs. He told how he left off cowboying when the profession of detective was chosen for him at a public demonstration of phrenology. The phrenologist’s fingers strolled over his scalp like ten stubby prophets and he uttered the word “detective” in a divine whisper, after which Siringo considered no other course. He talked about being dynamited out of his Chicago house by anarchists, landing literally in the street while pine shards and hot plumbing rained around him.
His sentiments for the most part were vengeful and emerged from experiences so long at a simmer that he spoke in what amounted to strong verse about those who had wronged him. I was surprised to learn he had been fired by the Pinkerton Agency years before; he gave an eloquent screed on the decayed character of Allan Pinkerton, whose “spine went missing at birth.” To a cowardly pard who had fled gunfire he gave a scorching epitaph. Strangely his softest words were for certain of the outlaws he had hunted: Butch Cassidy, whom he never saw in the flesh through four years of pursuit; the surgeon and gentleman gunsmith Howard Cawley, whose talent for baking cinnamon rolls made him welcome at Hole in the Wall; and Glendon, whom Siringo referred to as “that gentle bastard.”
Eventually James Clary taught me to douse a cloth with ether and lay it firmly over Siringo’s mouth—it was the only way he would fully rest, but I never liked to do it and as in so many things my hesitancy proved expensive. Once as I hovered over him Siringo glimpsed the descending hanky and lunged up, getting my hand in his teeth. He got to the bone before the ether took him, so that meant a little more work for poor Clary, plus my hand looked like a hairless creature killed on the road.
On the third day Clary dosed Siringo heavily and went in after the bullet. He located it between the rib it had smashed and the lung it would’ve pierced otherwise. Waking afterward Siringo told the doctor he had strolled through a deepening valley at the bottom of which he’d glimpsed the gates of Hell—black as you’d expect with the usual smoke rising in the background. His voice amused, Siringo described an emissary who had come out from the gates dressed in shiny skin like an eel’s. The emissary told Siringo they had a room reserved under his name but he wasn’t coming in just yet.
Clary said, “I know a preacher in Ponca City. I’ll send for him if you like.”
“To what point and purpose?” said Charles Siringo.
“Well, in case you wish to make a reservation elsewhere.”
“Be an adult, Mr. Clary. It happened in my mind. My own good brain carved out that valley and built those gates; that eel-skin fellow was my own conjuring.”
Clary regarded him placidly. “Most men would prefer not to take the chance.”
I will say for Siringo that he held to his convictions. Weak from days of fever and pain, he still found the strength to say, “I can’t believe I let an idiot probe my guts with a knife.”
“As you wish,” said Clary.
15
The earth slowly surfaced. Though I chafed to leave, five more days passed before the fusty waters withdrew enough to allow it. Even then the roads dried last, since they had no drainage. Mr. Bodes took the Packard apart, greasing it piece by cagey piece, and I packed my few clothes and watched from the window as mudcrackle peeled off the world. Redstart had often wondered aloud what we might find if a certain river or lake dried up—he imagined fishing tackle and anchors and human skulls and of course glittering doubloons. Well, I found no treasure as the Salt Fork retreated, but I did come across a decent wood frigate with a muslin sail set afloat by some youngster; also a drifting ox bladder inflated and tied with a knot attached to a note with the childish inscription, Help help, we are dying of hunger on the See of Sinbad. The note put me so much in mind of my own boy that I laughed aloud en route to a state of weepy fatigue.
The day came when Siringo crawled off the rank mattress and into a suit of clothes. He’d whipped the fever but I recall him trembling in the lobby after a wall-hugging journey down the stairs. How different he was; the suit was the same he had arrived in, a mossy wool, yet it now seemed his inheritance from a colossal ancestor. His beard had grown in almost pure white except for a streak of intractable red on his chin. For nearness to the next world he looked like one of your querulous great-greats with his damp eyes and his nodding jaw offset like a camel’s.
He said, “I’m afraid my driving days are over.”
“Not at all, you’ll mend quickly now,” I said. It didn’t hurt to be polite—he looked so frail, his clothes falling in over his bones, but then I said, “You’ll be back betraying old friends in a trice, I am sure.”
He seemed to enjoy that, wheezing like a gunnysack. He said, “Clary has arranged to sell my automobile,” and even his voice was attenuated and of shadowy timbre.
I inquired whether he intended to take the train home.
“Yes. Thank you, Becket, by the way,” he added humbly.
I regarded him with surprise.
“For sitting beside me,” he said, nodding as though it embarrassed him. “For bearing with me through the dark valley. It couldn’t have been pleasant for you,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
“Why did you do it?”
I hadn’t an answer. I thought of Glendon saying, Why don’t matter. I replied, “You’d have done the same for me.”
“You’re smarter than that,” he said, with a bit of his old pepper.
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“I guess I am.”
“Now you’ll be going home. Home to Minne-sota,” he intoned, lightly mimicking the grim Norwegians who had taken root on those northern plains. Noting my hand still bound up in cotton he added in a low voice, “I understand that is my doing.”
“It’s healing.”
“I am ashamed of that, Becket,” he said. “I make no apologies for what I am, but that shames me.”
“You weren’t yourself.”
“Is that a fact? Who would you say I was, then?”
There was a silence during which Siringo seemed to attempt by his will to stop the tremors in his fingers. “And Glen Dobie, where did he get to?”
“Away from you, it appears,” I couldn’t resist telling him.
He chuckled. “It’s true, I’m a reduced specimen now. Oh, I may hold off the grave awhile yet, but look how small I’ve become. How brittle.” His tone was of incredulity; I suppose small and brittle were conditions he had never imagined for himself.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Do for me—when do you leave, Becket?”
“In the morning.”
“Well, then, I’ll trouble you to take me to the train station.”
“Really? Are you strong enough to travel?”
He held my gaze a moment before answering, “I’m strong enough.”
And did I see something in his eyes? Did I see a dark personage crouching, back in the shadows of his brain? No. If I am honest with you, I didn’t see a thing.
16
The morning we left the Hundred and One I received a telegram from Susannah. The timing was dreamlike as Siringo and I stood on the boardwalk amid luggage while Mr. Bodes growled up in the swabbed Packard. The sun went sizzling up the bleached Oklahoma sky, which atoned for the fungoid exhale of the drying ranch. James Clary had stepped out to say goodbye, though he didn’t offer to shake hands because his were covered with violet antiseptic. I didn’t even notice the Western Union boy until he asked my name. Of course I fumbled and scrabbled at the envelope—I had been gone from home for twenty-six days, but they felt like years upon my shoulders.
The telegram said I MISS YOUR FACE, COME HOME.
I don’t remember laughing aloud, though Siringo told me later that I did—it would become my greatest merit as far as Siringo was concerned, that a woman cared for me—I laughed, it seems, then flush with new generosity I picked up Siringo’s two leather suitcases which he called his rhino grips and set them in the back of the Packard. When Bodes opened the passenger door Siringo fell into the seat. Poor doddering oldster was my thought, for he worked his mouth and finally produced the words “Goodbye, Clary,” for the doctor was nodding to us in his delicate way.
“Stay away from the black doors,” Clary whispered to Siringo, leaning forward.
“You’ll go through them before I do,” replied Siringo.
“I’ll not go through them at all,” said the doctor.
“Got religion did you?”
“You are the completest argument for it I have ever met,” said Clary, at which Siringo with surprising vitality leaned out and grasped the doctor’s violet hand, and so impulsive and free of calculation did this appear that I could only conclude the old monster was capable of gratitude after all, even toward the simpleton who had saved his life.
The Fiery Siringo
1
Speeding north from the ranch, Charles Siringo grew lighthearted. He hummed and chortled; we tore along the peeling mudplains and the dust we raised got into our teeth and tasted of swamp. My final glimpse of the Hundred and One was, like my first, of an elephant. No doubt the same elephant. It was at some distance, seemingly confused, charging and tilting and changing its mind. I suppose it still woke each morning expecting an African sunrise.
After some miles we came to an intersection. East would take us to Ponca City and the train station; west—well, I didn’t know where west would take us. In truth I wasn’t thinking about west. I was thinking about Susannah in her orange skirt.
“West, Becket,” Siringo said.
“Ponca City is east,” I replied, pulling to a stop.
“East is not our direction.”
You may guess I felt a touch of frost in the old spinal column, though I still hoped we had merely misunderstood one another.
“You asked for a ride to the depot. That’s where we’re headed.”
“The depot was never my intent.”
“No? What was your intent?”
He didn’t reply. Often, I would find, he didn’t reply, and these were usually times when I already knew the answer to the question I had asked.
I made to put the car in gear. In a tone of confidential humor he said, “If you turn east, Becket, you will never get to Ponca City.”
Now you are thinking, Just a blasted second here—he was enfeebled! He fell into the car! But I am telling you that now I did glimpse the dark creature squatting behind the flatness of his eyes.
“I know what you want,” I told him.
“Why, I want you and me to travel west in company. That’s fairly clear, I hope.”
“I don’t know where Glendon is. I can’t be your guide.”
“Then go as my companion. I need a driver. We’ll have a pleasant time.”
“I’m going home, Mr. Siringo.”
Siringo said merrily, “You are fibbing to yourself, Becket. You tell yourself I am infirm, but you don’t believe it.”
“I believe my two eyes.”
He held out his right hand. “Would you test my grip then?”
I looked at his hand. It quivered, which gave me confidence. I said, “Don’t humiliate yourself, you’ve had a hard time. You need to go home and continue your convalescence.” But I remembered Glendon saying Keep out of his grasp, so my hand stayed on the wheel.
“You daren’t shake my hand?”
Feeling every ounce a coward I said, “I do not trust you.”
“Very well.” And turning away he opened the door and got out of the car and hobbled over to the side of the road. He sat down in the dead ryegrass, bending in what I remember as an inadequate breeze against the heat. “I’ll wait here. Someone will be headed west, eventually.”
“Don’t be absurd. It’s going to be warm today. It’s warm already.”
“I’ve been warm before. Get on your way.”
In fact I wanted to get on my way but dreaded my swarming conscience down the road. Siringo had nearly died from that bullet wound; we were miles from town and had yet to see another auto on the road. If he didn’t get a ride, he would soon tip over and dry out. His mouth would draw open and he would become a leathery ribcage on that arid plain.
I said, “I’d rather not leave you here.”
“West,” he said, as though at play.
“Oh, come on. Come on now,” and getting out of the car I stepped up to Siringo with the universal signal of entreaty.
I held out my hand.
He nodded and reached for it. Next moment came a pop and blast of creamy white! No doubt my eyes whirled back and caught a glimpse of my skull. I jerked my hand to my stomach and bent over it with a cry.
“Why, what’s happened to you?” asked Siringo, getting awkwardly to his feet like any innocuous grandpa.
I couldn’t answer. For that matter I couldn’t breathe. I sat down in the rye where he had been and rocked and made a few high noises.
Stooping in he remarked, “Well, that looks just terrible.” What looked terrible was the ring finger of my right hand. He’d given it a tug and a sidewise twist so it sat unhinged above its socket.
“Tell you what,” said Siringo, now taking my elbow and with disquieting strength lifting me to my feet, “let’s drive west.”
I stumbled along in his grip and he opened the driver’s door of the Packard and settled me quite gently behind the wheel.
“How am I to drive,” I said, for though my breath was returned my vision still spun with pain and
I sweated like the opium enthusiasts Redstart had described to me from Conan Doyle.
“It will do you good. It’s soothing to drive, that is common knowledge.”
I had no words. I whacked the steering wheel with my left hand but of course that was the hand Siringo had bitten in his ravings. My wrath had nowhere to go. I started to pull at the agonized finger but felt the cool ghost of a looming faint. The finger was getting big and I couldn’t put it straight.
“You’ll feel better once we start moving,” he said.
So I steadied my breath and palmed the shifter and let out the clutch as if balancing tippy drinks and turned the Packard away from the sun. At the same time I began instinctively to bargain. “I’ll tell you where he is,” I said, as we began to climb off the caked floodplain into regions of spongy grass and cowland.
“You don’t know where he is,” Siringo replied.
“I know where he’s going. Approximately. I don’t have a street number or anything, but I know roughly.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Roughly will be useful. I prefer specific, of course—but roughly will do.”
I opened my mouth to say, He’ll be at a fruit orchard in the Rienda Valley. You see how quickly I’d have betrayed my friend? But Siringo stopped me.
“Oh, I know it’s California for Glen—Mexican Joe gave me that much! You clutch onto your details for the present, I don’t need them yet.”
“But I can tell you now! Then you can go on, unencumbered by me, and I can go home.”
“Unencumbered, hey.” Siringo took enormous wheezy pleasure from the word. His laughs soon deteriorated into furious coughing, which tired him out but didn’t ruin his cheerful mood. He said, “Becket, I know you long for home. I expect you’ve a doting wife. A flock of tender kidlets! But I need to make sure of your candor.”
“I’ll be honest.”
“You’ll be honest if you come with me, because the consequences of dishonesty will be obvious to you.”
“But I’ll tell the truth!” I’m sorry to say I nearly screamed the words.
“Why? I wouldn’t, in your place,” he said. “Also, Becket, I want your company. It comes to light we are both of us writers. Two authors traveling together—the discussions we’ll have! Here, what do you think of this proposition? Men are built of words. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?” At this he leaned forward and slapped my knee heartily, as if we were a pair of thrown-togethers at the beginning of a long train ride, discovering our common love of bookish pursuit. “Men are defined by the words they use, and I have always said so!”