The Kid

“It is my firm intention to put the dastardly gunplay behind me.”

Doc frowned and asked, “You get that out of some damn dime novel?”

The Kid winked. “Whip Penn and the Scoundrels of Whiskey Flats.”

* * *

With no job or responsibilities, the Kid frittered away his time practicing his shooting, knocking a tin can into a twirl down the road, trimming the skeletal branches off trees, inventing situations and reeling around to slap leather and nail the evildoer, or galloping a horse and tilting off until he could snatch his rifle from the ground.

And he gambled at faro at Beaver Smith’s or Bob Hargrove’s saloon, generally favoring placing his bets on the lacquered face cards on the green felt and mentally counting and recalling what had al

ready been dealt from the shoe so he could predict what would next fall. Like all gamblers, he said he won more than he lost, but in his case it was true.

His first Saturday in Fort Sumner there was a baile, a dance, with Doc and Charlie adding a fiddle and guitar to the trumpets and violins of a six-piece band. It wasn’t only songs from Old Mexico like “El Tecolotito” but a mix of tunes such as “Rose of Killarney” and “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” Doc invited the Kid onstage to sing the 7th Infantry’s regimental march, “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and the Kid grinned widely with the lyrics as he sang,

Such lonely thoughts my heart

Do fill since parting with my Sallie.

I seek for one as fair and gay

But find none to remind me.

How sweet the hours I passed away

With the girl I left behind me.

Women were so scarce that Pete Maxwell’s hundred cowhands and sheepherders took numbers and waited to be yelled for, were forced to dance with the oldest ladies first, and then again stirred in the hall with that form of despair that is patience.

The high stepping included a four-couple square dance called a cuadrilla, a side-by-side waltz called a varsoviana that was accompanied by the song “Put Your Little Foot Right There,” and the excitement and shrieks of the schottische, a slow polka in Europe but faster in America, with wild pivots and twirls.

With an attractive señora named Celsa Gutiérrez, the Kid flirted with a jarabe tapatío, otherwise known as a hat dance, while her liquor-addled husband dully watched from an old Victorian office chair. Then she yanked the Kid over to happily introduce him to Saval, who seemed interested only in swallowing more mescal.

Celsa was very pretty, with a pouting, pillowy mouth, copper-colored eyes, and hair more brunette than black. She told the Kid in Spanish that she and Saval had found housing in the old quartermaster store. Would he like to sleep there? They had room. The Kid said he’d give it prayerful consideration. She asked his age and confessed she was three years older. She said her maiden name was also Gutiérrez, that she and Saval were cousins. Even though her husband was within earshot, she confessed she was not in love with Saval, the marriage had been arranged, and she’d fought the family over it until she’d finally just grown tired of Saval’s ridiculous begging. Hearing that, her husband gave the Kid that woebegone, baleful look that no one wants to see, and the Kid excused himself to sit again with Manuela and Charlie, who was slumped in a chair with a fifth of Old Grand-Dad, his fiddle biding its time on his knee.

“Seen you talking to Celsa,” he said. “Don’t blame you a-tall. She’s got them kitchen eyes.”

“Kitchen eyes?”

Charlie smiled. “Saying, ‘Come and get it.’?”

Soon it was Celsa who came to the Kid in her husband’s overcoat and insisted in English, “For favor, you take Celsa home.” The Kid asked about Saval, and she said, “Like alway, he too borracho.” Drunk.

She hugged herself and leaned into the Kid as they walked to the old quartermaster store and the apartment next to Beaver Smith’s saloon. Celsa lit a hurricane lamp, and the Kid was startled to see that a tiny, dark-haired boy, maybe a toddler of three, was sleeping on a couch. Celsa let Saval’s overcoat fall to the floor in a heap as the child whimpered and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. She petted his hair and in Spanish said she missed him, and then she carried him over to an Azteca armchair. His face nuzzled into the front of her dress as he whined, “Leche.” Milk. She then unbuttoned her dress and lifted out a round left breast with a violet areola and nipple, which the toddler hungrily sucked on.

Celsa smiled as she saw Billy flushing in an interested stare. She asked in English, “You like?”

“Oh my yes. I’m very thirsty.”

She laughed. “I mean Candido. You like heem?”

“Oh, the tyke. Of course.”

In a flirting way she said, “Tell Candido he is beautiful and that you love him.”

And Billy said, “You’re beautiful and I love you.”

* * *