Bandita Bonita and Billy the Kid
The Scourge of New Mexico
Due Spring 2016
*It's interesting to note that in many
cases, though prostitutes of the Wild West were among the freest of women,
having liberties that women of "moral fiber" weren't privy to, many
were given drugs to ease them into the lifestyle of prostitution, a similar ploy
that is used today.
In this scene, Maya Essex is part of the Painted Ladies gang, who are whores on horseback looking to recruit fresh blood. Under the guise of friendship, they're setting their sights on none other than Lucy
"Lucky Lu" Howard, who is famous for being Billy the Kid's girl. They know she'll grant a big draw of customers and bring in cash over fist, which, understandably, infuriates
Billy to no end. The excerpt listed here just about sums that up.
But Lucy's on to their scheme, strong, wise girl that she is, and it's also important to note here that William H. Bonney, AKA, Billy the Kid,
treated women with respect, so in this scene it's necessary to point out that I
had no intention of making him seem a hard man (I wouldn't use Billy in this manner), he only loves Lucy so, and this is explained excessively in
the novel, hence, I included the scene where Billy torments himself over his desperate treatment of Lucy. Billy loves Lucy and is in a constant fight to keep her away from the Painted Ladies.
Chapter Four
Bandita Bonita and Billy the Kid
The Scourge of New Mexico
I ran into Maya Essex and let her talk me
into visiting the Oriental side of town and its opium den. I had never been,
but the mood I had been in as of late confiscated my common sense. I was still
angry at Jimmy and the fact that Finnegan Flynn was still out there living
another day to ruin someone else’s, and all of this on the heels of my inability
to sort out the still very raw events of the past year; all that had happened
during the war left me sullen when I’d think on it. I felt helpless, for what
could anyone do to quell my distress? And so I turned to “Johnny Poppies”. I found
myself tired of hoping against hope to be saved by a man who only dragged me
down with his warped sense of honor, and always with the excuse that there was
bloody payback to be tendered.
In
a soporific miasma by sundown, I had been jerked forcibly from a chaise I
lounged on and smacked across my face in an attempt to rouse me from my stupor.
After this unpleasant gesture that was dealt me, I made out the blurry vision
of Josiah before me as he dragged me through the place and out its door. The remaining
light outside still managed to hurt my eyes and I walked offbeat and slowly. I
kept losing my standing as my weakened knees repeatedly buckled, and so Josiah
picked me up and carried me the rest of the way to the Old Ruidoso. When we
reached the building I was set back down on my feet, promptly lost my balance,
and stumbled before being able to right myself. I was in no condition to notice
who it was that stood around me, nor was I aware of what was happening when Billy
viciously grabbed me by the arms and shook me violently in an attempt to bring
me around. All of this manhandling caused me a tremendous amount of discomfort
as it attacked my easy state of repose; it was all so rudely irritating.
Unresponsive and clouded, I feebly tried to fight back and push him away but,
even if I had had all of my faculties and strength about me, I still would not
have been able to fight him off. Being horribly jostled about in my condition
was so very unpleasant and, in my hazy state, things had been made even more
disagreeable as I was again lifted from my feet and thrown into a trough of
cold December water to sober me. I screamed and kicked while Billy held me
down, nearly drowning me before pulling me up for air and then plunging me back
under again. He would hold me there so long that I thought he truly meant to
sink me, and as I kicked and fought my energy waned quickly, causing my held
breath to give out faster than it ought to have otherwise.
He
yanked me back up, shaking me something awful again out of anger, attempting to
wake me. I managed to strike out and claw at his face before he smacked me hard
to render me useless and again plunged me back down beneath the water. I kicked
with all my might when he finally let up, pulling me up and over the side of
the trough, letting me fall carelessly to the hard packed, frozen ground.
Lying
there in a pool of muddy, cold water, I retched so violently from all the
exertion that the muscles of my belly cramped and burned, my stomach feeling as
if it would tear open as the bile mercilessly flooded out of me. I was then
left there to wither in my sorry state as I gasped powerfully for breath. When
I had caught enough wind, Billy brutally picked me up and cruelly threw me into
our room, locking the door behind me and making me a prisoner. I fell to the
floor, happy to be left alone though I was wet and shivering. I couldn’t think
straight; I hadn’t even the sense, or the energy, to crawl to the lit stove and
lie before it or remove my drenched, icy clothing to exchange it for something
warm and dry. Instead, I only lay where I fell, too exhausted to move.
My
punishment had not yet ended with the next morning. I had contracted a terrible
cold and an aching head which was joined by a sore and swollen throat and,
after falling asleep on the hard floor in my wet clothes, I had woken up on my
right side to discover excruciating agony in my hip and a hard ache in my shoulder
that whipped across my back, disallowing me to move my arm and neck painlessly.
I had also inherited stiff and sore muscles throughout the rest of my body.
Bleary
eyed and ill, I coped with my discomfort by crawling at a near slither towards
the bed, managing to pull myself up onto it. I lay there in a fetal position,
desiring only not to move anymore. I could smell the damp filth that had
nestled into my clothing, making me feel all the more unpleasant.
It
was not long after this ordinarily small achievement, made extraordinary by my
current condition, when Billy entered the room, his voice piercing as he
lectured me on my behavior and presented to me the bottle of laudanum that I had
been hiding. Slowly and with some effort, I raised my deeply sore arms so I
could bring my hands to my ears in an attempt to try and stop the torture he
was pressing upon my aching head, but he would be undeterred and unsympathetic
by my deteriorated state. My head pounded as Billy’s voice seemed earsplitting,
made worse as it merged with the screaming pain in my head. I plead with God to
make him stop through the mercy of humanity, but God would not budge. I could
not understand the words he was shouting; I could not understand anything but
the agony.
After
exhausting himself he finally took pity on me and carefully removed my dirty
clothing, sweeping his fingers gently over my skin and tenderly minding my
physical discomfort. I knew he had taken no pleasure in reprimanding me, and
that by lovingly caring for me now he was trying to make up for it, showing his
affection for me. He redressed me in my nightshirt and placed me under the
covers before going for the doctor.
I
had a fever and had developed a cough, and through witnessing my misery, Billy
finally seemed to break down and gain compassion, lying in bed and staying with
me for the rest of the day. As I turned away from him and tried to sleep, he
lay bolstered but flush against my body, his hand resting on my side as he read
to himself, worried and guilt-ridden over my deprived health.
Restless,
I drifted in and out of a dreamless unconsciousness as Billy would lean over
every so often and rub my back to try and soothe me. Though I did not want to
look at him out of some peculiar combination of fear, anger, and shame, I did
not make any attempt to move away from him or in any way give him the
impression that I wanted him to leave me alone. I could not blame him for being
so upset with me for what I had done; going to that opium den and hiding the
laudanum. I knew that he had only reacted as he did out of fear. I believed
that he was angrier with me than I with him, but I didn’t realize the
self-doubt he felt at treating me with such brutality. Before he had come to
try and fix things with me after locking me in our room for the night, he had
gone off alone to sit and brood over what he had done.
***
“Will you leave me be?”
Jimmy
stood and looked down at Billy who sat hiding on the floor of the livery
stable, his head hung low. Jimmy ignored him and sat down alongside him.
“Billy,
what you did…”
Billy
raised his head to Jimmy, his eyes warning the well-meaning boy to watch his
words. Jimmy’s breath caught and he second-guessed himself, the Colts strapped
to Billy’s waste drawing his nervous attention before he dared himself to go
on.
He won’t shoot me over this, he reasoned.
“It
was—”
“What
do you know about it?”
Billy’s
tone was downright malicious, but Jimmy knew better, that Billy would only bark
without biting. And, he knew, once he understood Jimmy had come as a friend, Billy
would back down.
“I
know plenty more than you might think,” Jimmy replied defensively.
“Is
that so?”
“Yeah,
it’s so.” Jimmy’s voice grew subdued. “I never coulda done a’thing like that,
what you did—“
“And
I suppose that makes you a better man than me?”
Billy’s
agitation was becoming ever more apparent—he was defensive, and Jimmy realized
that he needed to make his point quickly.
“Why
exactly is it that you’re here?” Billy asked. “You intend to make me feel worse
than I already do?”
“No.
In fact, I intend just the opposite. I wouldn’t have had the courage to do
that.”
“So,
what’s your point? It takes a big man to beat up on a woman?”
“No…it
takes a big man to do what needs doing, even if it means using a strong hand
against a woman.”
Snorting
derisively, Billy said, “Shit…d’you know how stupid you sound, Moffey?”
“No,
I mean it, Bill. I couldn’t of brought myself to do that to her. I couldn’t of
risked her hating me, despite being angry enough to want to throttle and beat
sense into her myself. She’ll kill herself if she’s allowed to go down that
road. Talking to a person about it doesn’t get the job done, I know.”
“Yeah,
well, right about now she hates you anyway.”
Billy
couldn’t keep the bite out of his voice, making his remark meaner than he had
meant to. He began to understand that
Jimmy was on his side, but that didn’t make him feel any better about what he
had done. He was cruel beyond words to the one person that meant everything to
him, the one person he wouldn’t have wanted to hurt for anything in the world.
Jimmy
was quiet a moment, and then said, “I lost my ma that way.”
Being
of a mind to quickly respond nastily to anything Jimmy might have to say, Billy
pointedly caught his words at this unexpected, heartfelt confession and felt a
hitch in his throat, immediately regretting having spoken to the boy with such
spite. After waiting a few moments he said, “I’m sorry about that.”
“Yeah…so
am I,” Jimmy chuckled awkwardly. “My pa, he left us. He took up with some other
woman—left us poverty-stricken. And my ma, she just about fell apart, and I
could only watch it happen. Once a body gets that high into its system and gets
to back out of reality for a little while, well, that’s a hold that won’t let
go. That grip only gets tighter; it only gets worse.”
Billy
nodded, appreciative of Jimmy’s comprehension and loss. Letting his guard down,
an attribute he had never done with Jimmy before now, he said, “I don’t know
how to keep her safe. I don’t know what to do with her; I can’t make her do
anything.”
“Yeah,”
Jimmy agreed. “I get that. She really digs her heels in.”
Billy
laughed at that before returning to a sullen and regretful disposition.
“I
shouldn’t have done that to her.”
“Hell
yes you should have!” Jimmy declared. “Maybe that goddamned dummy will think
twice next time!”
“I
found a bottle on her. Did you know she’d been doing that stuff?”
“No.
If I had I would have told you about it.”
Billy
nodded. “Yeah, guess you might of.” Shaking his head he added, “How come I
didn’t know? I should have known. I
can’t seem to make anything right.”
“How’s
that you mean?”
“If
it weren’t for me, none of these things would happen to her. I don’t want her
to leave me, but mostly I’m so desperate for her to go just so I know she’ll be
okay.”
“She
does these things to herself, Bill. And that girl that took her, that painted
lady girl—they ain’t, not any of ‘em, any good for her. I see you direct her. We
all do. She rebels. It ain’t you, it’s her. Hell, you’re right—you can’t make
her do anything. You never influenced her poorly, not deliberately. You only
tried to put her right out here all along and you know it. I see it—that if she
don’t get her own way she burns it down.”
“I
can’t say as I blame her for that.”
“Why’s
that?”
“Because
she’s had to do things everybody else’s way all her life.”
Billy
put his hands to his head and repeated, “I shouldn’t have done what I did to
her.”
Jimmy
put his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Any fool can see you love her, Billy. We all
know you’d never put a hand on her out of anger just for the sake of doing so.
I know there ain’t a thing anybody can say to make you feel better about it, at
least not any one of us.”
When
Billy didn’t reply, Jimmy said, “Talk to her. If I had with her what you do…I
see now that you love her as much as she says you do. I’d thought I loved her
more, that I was more devoted, but,” Jimmy shook his head. “I see now why you
are the way you are—to protect her. I wouldn’t have had the guts to put her in
her place like that for her own good.” Jimmy blushed, his face falling with sadness.
“I might of just stood by and watched rather than risk her hatred. What you
both have…she’ll set you right. Just go to her.”
Jimmy
left a beat of silence before opening his mouth again, “But Billy…”
Billy
looked up, preparing to hang onto the words Jimmy would say next, waiting to
hear any other words of encouragement that might help him fix what he’d done,
but what Jimmy would say, though it was advice indeed, sounded more as if it
were a threat.
“Don’t
underestimate Lucy. She has every intention of staying here, no matter what
happens. You may know her better than anyone, better than me, but I know her
well enough. I pay attention where you take her for granted. I know without a
doubt that there is nothing you can do, nothing
that will drive her out. Be careful of how you push her.”
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