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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