Doc

by Mary Doria Russell

People generally got meaner and harder and sadder. So maybe it was a blessing to die before life could compromise and coarsen you, and twist you into someone you didn’t hardly recognize.

If the doves are soiled, who dirtied them? That’s what Bessie wished someone would ask. If the women have fallen, who pushed them? But reformers would go just this far and no farther: lament the sin, but ask no questions.

And so in every city in America, a corrupt farce played out before a respectable audience eager for cautionary tales of female depravity. The police arrested the girls and marched them down public avenues to be stared at by jeering crowds of nice people. Judges levied fines and sent the girls out penniless, with no way to pay for their next meal except go back to whoring. Politicians railed against unrepentant wickedness to win votes. And later that night, all of the bastards—cops, judges, and pols—were in the house, winking and jovial, collecting their cut of the brothel income and taking some out in trade.

“Horses are mirrors. They’ll show you back whatever you show them. Watch a man with a horse, and you’ll see what’s inside his own self.”

“I do not want to spend another minute of whatever I have left bein’ scared. I can’t carry the fear anymore. Not mine. Not yours. I have to lay that burden down.”

Knowing things about people is not the same as understanding them,

“That is your ghost life, Wyatt,” Doc told him, and closed his eyes again. “That is the life you might have had. This is the life you’ve got.”

Whatever you worship will consume you, Dong-Sing wrote one week. Bob Wright worships money. Wyatt Earp worships justice. Eddie Foy worships applause. Doc worships home and family, as I do. How will this consume us?

“You keep joking about dying, and I wish you’d quit. It’s like you’re trying to get used to the idea,” Morg said. “Making friends with it, almost.”

“We are none of us born into Eden,” Doc said reasonably. “World’s plenty evil when we get here. Question is, what’s the best way to play a bad hand?

She promises, You’ll beat the odds. A hundred to one? A thousand to one? A million to one? Eight to five, Hope lies. Odds are, when your time comes, you won’t even ask, “For or against?” You’ll swing up on that horse, and ride.

And though none of Wyatt’s prayers had ever once been answered, and though he knew that his soul was not pure and his faith was not strong, and though he could not understand why God always took the best and the sweetest to his bosom and left the dregs to get meaner and worse—in spite of it all, he began to pray. Dear Lord, please, give him time! Please, Lord, let him finish! But John Henry Holliday was praying too, just as earnestly and to any god who might listen. Now. Now. Now. Take me now. Now: with this music beneath his hands. Now: while he was still a gentle man who might have made his mother proud. Now: while beauty could still beat back the blind and brutal disease that was eating him alive.