Like many a young man in the decades following the Civil War, Henry McCarty drifted westward. Eventually he found his way to the New Mexico and Arizona Territories, where he committed a series of murders in the Lincoln County Wars. Eventually Sheriff Pat Garett caught up with him at a ranch in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
Billy the Kid takes the hard summer on his neck, kicking a shank of leather. He’s sixteen. Hard to say. Nineteen in the shadows. He’s got a way of getting outside himself, floating, then jerking himself back in, he drinks gin, schnapps in the bunkhouse, wakes up with a banging headache, a dust-funnel in his mouth. The core of the boy’s obscured even to him, he rides along the Mexican Blackbird Trail, the sun branding the back of his neck, not like on Lower East Side in forever shadow, he’d steal peaches, juices went down his fingers, wrists, he let the Goerck Street mutt lick it off. He, Henry McCarty, had to climb lightless tenement stairs every time, three flights, stink of the German longshoreman, larvae in the horseshit, the flies. Flies. Henry McCarty’s the boy. Billy the Kid is the man. In Indiana, in a boarding house with brother, mother, stepfather, one room, his mother worked laundry jobs before the Chinks came, their language like insect language, his mama’s voice like a river-hawk’s, the hew and cry, County Kerry where she was born. The stepfather could’ve been anyone, away, one shoe with a broken sole, tramping to the indoor privy they shared with the 1812 veteran down the hall. His shirt hung on the back of the caneback chair, there was no man in it.
Henry Antrim’s learning to ride. A brown mare with white sock on left hind foot. Natural pacer. He’s nineteen. He climbs over wire fences. Takes a rifle, picking prairie dogs out of their burrows. Their faces inquisitive. Not much to their insides really. Luminous stuff to toss away. He squints, lets go a long line of spit, catching a shining bug. Sometimes there’s the feeling, someone telling you wait a minute. Sun’s going to outlast the sky. Oceans drying, fish, whales. A feeling at the top of your mouth. Like you could do harm. He’s watched eyelids flutter, memories going out. Convulse. Your insides get used to it. But doesn’t like it. Seeing. The boy’s dreaming, of course, he goes for long dreams, stories loosely linked and things he’d never thought, oceans, ladies, a big hotel, wingback chair.
A woman’s body’s like liquid air. Lungs fill with her till you can’t breathe, then breathe more than you can. Her drawers taste of lye and ash. Smell perfumed. Doesn’t care she’s on her period. Feels close to something. Death takes you, it must, breath giving out to envious skies. There’s the voice of a man, whispering. Pat. Death. Could you. His brother wrote their mama died. His brother took the train from Silver City, never heard of him again. Mama in a bed, too late, he rides to unremember her Kerry songs.
The photo of Billy aka William Bonney aka Henry McCarty aka Kid Antrim aka Billy the Kid. One photo vouchsafed. Buck teeth. Hat like a dented pipe. Eyes withholding. Homicide belonging to bad options. What makes Billy alive is the photo. One. In the scant years of his life, twenty-one, make that twenty-two, eighteen, identities mask identities, some essential arsenal of identity, some picked up along the way, tossed in the trash. Pat came in while he was almost fucking her. Her hair sloshing over his back. He tried growing a beard one time, his hair on his chin and lip soft as new petals. New Mexico rides a horse, undisciplined but loose in a saddle. New Mexico tips a hat. She kisses him rising. Pat has no badge, his shoes tell the tides.
The corpse’s propped up on a sidewalk. Billy’s. Henry’s. It recalls the East River, oyster whiff coming across the flats, gentlemen in hats. He’d take an apple and run. Once half a tuna from the Spanish monger that time. So far— Walking past the corpse, it’s like a dog you’d pet not tease. You could never. He’d get the way he did, you know. Now— Spoke Mexican, still New York in his mouth. Now— Cats coming along, licking the shoes and face at night. Someone stole Bill’s gun and holster, shoes for souvenirs, he’s defenseless now, sightless, cool, cool in sweetness of New Mexican gloaming.
