Synopsis

Holliday follows the infamous 1880s gambler, dentist, and gunslinger, Doc Holliday. From the outset, Doc has been diagnosed with tuberculosis and is told to head to drier climates and imbibe to prolong his life. He has also heard of a spring located somewhere along the frontier that could cure him—what he believes to be the mythical Fountain of Youth.

The novel portrays Holliday as a rock star, a living legend, increasingly hounded by paparazzi, enamored by death, cards, booze, and women. Doc is a mixture of Clint Eastwood and Jim Morrison, and though he is able to help his friend, Wyatt Earp, exact revenge, his condition worsens, traveling from Arizona to Denver, and finally dying in a sanatorium in Colorado with his boots off. A slow and unfitting end for such a bombastic outlaw.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1: Every Day Is Exactly The Same

 Dallas, 1874
Four Years Earlier

The saloon was a long, thin room. The bartender stood behind the pine on the right, doling out booze to morning drunkards and, in the back, a loud faro game carried over from the night before; the beleaguered dealer seemed relieved to see Doc. Doc sat down at a table fit for one, but with two chairs. He ordered three shots, an antelope steak, and buckwheat cakes. He ate with an acute awareness of his mustache.

He cut his antelope steak into cubes and ate each one a half minute apart, enjoying the dry sting of the whiskey in between bites. A tall man with a crusted scar above his lip and his holster showing walked over from the faro table and sat down across from Doc. He recognized the man from a game earlier in the week.

“Why Harrison,” said Doc, “I don’t think I have enough for the both of us.” His chalky Southern accent still contained a boyish lilt.

“That’s ok. I take it bloody anyways.” Harrison grabbed one of Doc’s drinks and chugged it down. “You owe me from the other night, Holliday.”

“That’s funny,” Doc placed a cube of antelope on his tongue, “I remember winning the other night.”

“You cheated.”

“So did you. It appears I’m simply better at it than you are. Replace my whiskey. It helps my condition.”

“I don’t take orders from no lungers.” Harrison clenched his thick, hairy fingers on the table.

“Now why would you say something hateful?”

All the eyes in the bar and at the faro table fell on Doc. He felt rock quiet. He remembered the sound of chimes in Georgia and how one night when there was no wind, they stopped. He imagined his rounds as freedom—wheeze and squeal of the chamber. He smelled the powder and burnt flesh. They followed him like a prayer.

“I heard you was a dentist anyway. What’s a dentist doing getting himself into card playing and trouble like this all, Doc?” said Harrison.

“Call me John Henry. It’s more formal.” Doc swigged down his last whiskey and called the bartender over for another. The bartender remained frozen. “The service is just terrible here.”

“Just gimme my money fore I end you, Holliday.”

“You know, Harrison, it seems to me that you haven’t given enough thought to what that end means really. You’re a misfit, God’s regret. Or maybe you don’t believe in anything more than the soil they scatter on you. Are you Godless, Harrison?”

Harrison reached down and gripped his gun in his holster. He peered back at the faro table and then straight into Doc. “You don’t ever question a man’s God, lunger. I’m right square with God at this moment. I’ma better man than you.”

Doc smiled. His mustache curled up like horns. In one concise swipe, he snapped his pistol from under the table and buried two shots square in Harrison’s scruffy neck. “I’m convinced.”

Harrison strained and thrashed to cover the holes as the blood spurted and poured down onto the table; Doc lifted his buckwheat cakes. After a few seconds of gurgling, Harrison’s head dropped to the table, and his hat rolled off and down toward the bar.

“What’d you go and do that for, Doc?” said the barkeep, still teetering behind the bar. “You’re not gonna be welcome here.”

“Self-defense. Clear as day.” Doc had made a few friends in this town, and as he searched the room, he didn’t see any of them. “I’ll bring back the plate,” he added, walking out with his meal and his gun.

Doc’s face simmered with new blood as he walked the streets of Dallas. He always felt less human after he’d killed someone. Like the little bit of himself that he still kept from home bled out as they did. His mother had taught him to calculate risk, anticipate every outcome, and he always did, as if it preserved her in some way; but there remained that primal moment just before the draw when he could let it all scatter to the floor. He felt nothing but the sugary drip of death in the back of his throat.

The only reason he’d headed out west in the first place was that he’d heard rumors of a wellness spring that could cure him of his consumption. Every cowtown he went to though, they always said it was in the next one. But they’d all heard of it. Linwood he’d heard it called, but it wasn’t on any map. He always got closer, but never close enough to smell the hot salt or taste it in his aching throat. The only thing he tasted in the Dallas streets was shit.

The springs went by many names as they had throughout history, much greater men had followed the path and grown old and died before ever reaching their destination. Some claimed south: in the land of the Ethiopians, or in the Caribbean, but Doc knew that his salvation lay due west. His mother taught him about this spring. The Age of Exploration, she called it. But John Henry believed wholly in his own exploration. Its restorative powers fascinated him as a child, and he actively read about Ponce de Leon, the writings of Herodotus, and Alexander the Great. However, none of them understood that this spring, this “fountain of youth,” as they’d called it, would only accept desperation. Only a man at the last twist of his knot could unearth it.

About the Author

Matthew Di Paoli has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times, including 2020. He has won the Wilbur & Niso Smith Adventure Writing Prize, the Prism Review, two Elizabeth’s, and Momaya Review Short Story Contests. Matthew earned his MFA in Fiction at Columbia University. He has been published in Boulevard, Fjords, Post Road, and Cleaver, among others. He is also the author of Killstanbul with El Balazo Press.

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