Alone In Tombstone

The alkaline scent of the desert rushed in with the breeze when I opened the front doors of the photography studio. I blinked against the swirling dust. A cowboy with a red sash leaned against a lamppost, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, watching me through squinted eyes.

"Some guy's looking for you."

I kicked the door stop into place and switched the sign to open. At nine AM, only a handful of tourists wandered along Allen Street in Tombstone, Arizona. Most had been up late drinking and dancing in the saloons, or playing pool, or singing karaoke. In the morning, only young families with children too restless to be contained in tiny hotel rooms and elderly couples who avoided the crowds ventured out to snap pictures of the historic town where Doc Holiday and the Earp brothers fought against the lawlessness of the Clanton gang.

"Who?" I'd arrived in town less than two months earlier and knew only a handful of people. If they were looking for me, they all knew where to find me.

The cowboy shrugged. "Some old guy."

I searched the street in both directions but saw no familiar faces.

"If I see him again, should I tell him to scoot?"

Curiosity got the best of me. "No. It's okay. Send him here, though, not to my apartment."

He crushed his cigarette out against the sole of his boot and tossed it in a nearby trashcan. "Will do." When he walked away, his spurs played tambourine to the rhythm of his steps and two little boys in the street pointed and whispered about how cool the cowboys were.

I agreed. After several weeks, the charm of men in dusters and wide-brimmed hats strolling arm-in-arm with women in corsets and bustles next to a dirt road where horses pulled bright red stagecoaches had not begun to wear off. All my life I'd longed to escape the flat farm country of the Midwest. This seemed about as far away as an alien planet.

Never mind I didn't have a close friend in a thousand-mile radius. There was a price to be paid for growing up, right? I buried a pang of loneliness beneath the joy of new adventures to be enjoyed and turned to go back inside and get ready for the day.

"Hey, kid." A gruff voice, deep and rumbly as an earthquake sent my heart into a stutter.

I spun around and saw him standing in the street like a hero in an old west movie—except instead of leather chaps and dusty cowboy boots, he wore baggy khaki pants and a blue and white plaid button-front shirt.

Next thing I knew, my father's arms wrapped around me so tight I thought my ribs might break. I gave as good as I got.

"Take it easy, kid. You're gonna squeeze the life out of me."

He smelled like coffee and old-fashioned spray starch. It was the scent of my childhood. "How?" I asked.

"It wasn't so hard. Only about twenty-five people living in this town as far as I can tell. I started at one end of the street and asked each of 'em if they knew Elizabeth. 'Bout half of them said they did." He arched one thick brow at me. "Most of 'em that knew you was of the male persuasion, I noticed."

My cheeks burned. Tombstone was a place where it was exceedingly easy for a young single person to find plenty of willing company. I knew about the dancing and drinking and late-night pool games from personal experience. "Why are you here?"

"I need a reason to see my kid?"

"You're two-thousand miles from home," I pointed out.

He shrugged. "Boss needed someone to make a delivery to a place outside of Vegas. Thought I'd rent a car and pop in, while I was in the neighborhood."

"Vegas is an eight-hour drive!"

"Ain't so far," he said, tucking his hands in his pockets.

Inside the studio, my dad let me pour him a cup of coffee and passed the morning sipping Folgers brew and watching me dress tourists in Victorian garb and snap photos of them. Sometimes I heard his low chuckle rumble slowly across the room and I couldn't help but share his joy.

The cowboy stuck his head in around lunchtime. His gaze sought my father and then landed on me. "Okay?"

"Yeah. This is my dad."

He tipped his hat in my father's direction. "Sir."

My dad toasted him with his Styrofoam coffee cup. After he left, he said, "That one had a sparkle in his eye when I mentioned your name."

"He's just a friend, Dad." And that was true, more or less.

After work I laced my arm through my father's and strolled the boardwalk with him.

"It's the real OK Corral?" he asked.

"That's it," I said. Then I told him the saloon to our left is where Morgan Earp died. "This is where the Earp brothers worked as card dealers," I gestured to the building on the corner. "And there's the Birdcage Theater at the end of the street. After the mines went bankrupt, the owners locked the doors and walked away. There's still a table in there with poker chips laying on it just they way they were back then."

"Ain't that something," he said with a shake of his head. "What's that?"

I followed his gaze. "It's a restaurant with an old west show."

"Good food?"

"Great burgers."

The bright sun sparkled in his eyes. "Let me take you out to dinner, kid."

I thought of him, agreeing to fly across the country for work and then renting a car, driving all night. "I'm all grown up now, Dad, and you're sort of on vacation, right? Why don't you let me treat you for once?"

He looked at me in a way he never had before, and then he nodded and said, "I'm sure glad I came."

"Me too, Dad."