But he meant it about throwing her out and he could do it. Doris felt her heart fail, briefly, start up again. Then she did the unthinkable. For this family it was unthinkable. She stood up and said, “Very well, I have heard enough. I am going to my room.”

“What?” Mrs. Webb and Josephina looked up, staring at her. Webb cried out, “I’ll be Goddamned if you will!” He slammed his glass down on the sideboard.

Doris gathered her skirts. “I shall not spend another moment listening while you drink and rant. I was raised with kind and loving parents. I know what is right and good.” She knew this sounded schoolmarmish but she had no other words; she turned and moved toward the door with her skirts in both hands.

“Just stop right there young woman!” he cried, and Mrs. Webb said, “How dare you! Speak like that to your employer!” And Josephina cried out, “Ha ha!”

She hurried down the hall, toward the steep stairs. Another set of stairs up to the little attic where she lived. Up there Mercedes had made her pallet to spend the night. House-cleaning was tomorrow early. She had likely been listening to every word. Colonel Webb darted down the hall behind Doris, crying in a low voice, “You just stop right there, Miss Dillon, I am not finished. I am not finished. You are going to sit and listen to what I have to say.”

Doris turned with her back to the stairwell.

“Don’t you lay a hand on me,” she said. “I will fight you.”

Mrs. Webb came behind him and had begun to cry. “Oh Franklin, please, please let it go!”

Doris had been through these scenes now at least a thousand times. They were witless and without end. They were predictable and they always had the same progression. He drinks and then he rants, he threatens. Mrs. Webb cries and blames either Doris or Josephina for “setting him off.” Then he sets off; drunk on his performance. Then somebody gets up to leave. Then Mrs. Webb breaks into tears. Over and over. They were dimwitted wights, all three of them.

Colonel Webb turned on his wife and this gave Doris one or two seconds to turn and run up the stairs, shoot into her room, and slam the door behind her.

Simon bought an ancient surrey from old man Cassiano, who had it sitting behind the feed store. Cats had taken it over and were comfortable on the plush seats and were living well on the scraps from the neighboring Central Hotel saloon. Simon lay down on his back, wriggled beneath the surrey and checked the undercarriage, the tie-rods, the bolsters, the hounds. It seemed all the parts were good and it would not fall apart on the way to the Red River. That took a hundred dollars, and then he paid down thirty dollars on a harness, twenty-five owed.

He had not wanted Doris to simply escape, leave, bolt, flee. But the thought of being with her out in the wide world, free to speak and go where they would, had taken over him entirely. They would find the Justice of the Peace in Helotes within the day—there was time for a priest later.

Later, later, it seemed later would never come. Every hour was like pig iron. He bought a hardy little pony that had been stabled at Corrigan’s. When he ran his hands over the small horse the livery owner said he might be a little troubled with his eyesight in the right eye. Simon made several feints with one hand toward that side of his head and said,

“No, sir, he’s totally blind in that eye.”

“Well, that could be true. But now he’s a strong fellow, I guarantee you. Sound as a dollar.”

Simon led him out with a halter into Main Plaza and the little horse bounced from hoof to hoof in his happiness to be out of the stall, anxious to show he could work, that he was strong and didn’t miss that eye in the least, not in the least. He had a brave small toss of his head as if in hope that he would be released from his stinking horse yard, his uncleaned stall that smelled of old horse piss. That someone might buy him, that they might go to far places and walk out into grass and clean water. Simon vaulted onto his back and returned to Corrigan’s bareback with only a halter and was pleased with him. Because of his blind right eye Simon paid only eighty dollars for him.

She would want to know his name and so he asked. It was Tupelo and Tupelo the little brassy bay stared after him with his one eye in despair as Simon paid his money and walked away. There is no way you can tell them you will be back, that it was all going to be all right, and so the little horse slowly returned to his hay, his ears flopped down in discouragement. Between paying his money to Twohig’s on the mortgage and buying the horse, buggy, and harness he was down to a few dollars and still owed twenty-five on the harness, but that’s how his life had always been and he had made it this far hadn’t he?

He would meet her on the Losoya Street bridge within a week, no longer, and they would elope, that exciting, romantic, and dashing course of action they would tell their grandchildren about. Tales of valor and undying love.

Chapter Twenty-three

The next afternoon an invitation was handed to Simon by a black corporal. The man touched his hat to Simon and then left the saloon, stepping over the mop bucket.

Simon broke the seal open. It was from the Webb residence; he tried to shut down his heart rate but then saw it was not from Doris Dillon but from Colonel Webb. Then his heart started hammering again.

Having heard of your excellent music, sir, this is a request for your group to play for a tea-dance at the residence of Colonel Webb on February 24th at seven in the evening held in honor of Commissioner Davis’s visit to San Antonio. Colonel Webb is prepared to pay the equivalent amount that your group would earn in one night at the Plaza House Hotel. Please reply if this is satisfactory. Mrs. Franklin Webb.

Damon took it from Simon and read it. The bell in the cathedral tower rang out five o’clock and a man drove along the alleyway singing When first into this country, a stranger I came, I courted a fair maid, Nancy was her name . . .

Damon said, “An invitation to disaster.”

“No,” said Simon in an abstracted voice. “She’s invited us because we’re the popular players of the moment, she probably doesn’t remember me from Fort Brown. Never knew my name. Sure as hell doesn’t know about me and Doris.” He folded the message carefully. “We’ve got to get clothes cleaned.” He smiled and a sly, calculating happiness shone in his face. “In two more days.”

“Commissioner Davis,” said Damon. “The feckless scoundrel.” Then after a pause, “She’ll be there. Catastrophes await.”

“Nah.” Simon wafted across the saloon floor toward the rear, thinking about a hot bath, a haircut, the names of waltzes.

The noises of town were now beginning to jar Simon’s thoughts like tinning hammers. It was time to go. Time to pull on his Kentucky hat and shake out the old checkered shirt. On the Plaza House stage he tacked up the set list on a music stand and set it to one side, where Damon could glance at it. Then shouts came from the kitchen. Both of them ran back to find Pruitt in an argument with one of the delivery men. It was about a banjo or the condition of a banjo or its price, who knew? Pruitt held it in one hand; the neck was separating from the resonator and stuck out at an angle. Pruitt was swearing a long fizzling hot streak at the man.

“What the blue painted fuck is this?” he yelled. He shook the damaged banjo in the man’s face.

He had a filthy mouth, he had shown up more than once with a torn collar, he drifted always toward the prostitutes who came to sit on the left side of the door in their dresses with dirty hems and spotted bodices, eating roasted peanuts.

Damon jumped between the two. The banjo was thrown to the kitchen floor. The delivery man shook a fist at Pruitt and at the same time backed out the rear kitchen door, groping for the sill with his foot.

Damon said, “Pruitt, shut up.”

Pruitt turned a long, slow calculating stare at both of them. “Trying to get a Goddamned banjo so I could play at this dance coming up.” Then he spun around and snatched up a paring knife as he did so and stalked toward the delivery man. Damon stepped forward, Simon came behind him and laid hold of Pruitt’s wrist while Damon twisted the knife from his hand. In the brief, sharp struggle the delivery man fled.

Pruitt shouted, “You son of a bitch . . .”

“One more time and you’re gone,” Simon said. “Do you hear me?”

Simon faced Pruitt down and stood until he turned away. Simon thought how he was wading through sludge to get to Doris, knee-deep in turmoil, insane people, one emotional cripple after another. Would it ever end, how would it end?