Chapter Text
Billy ducks the first punch, feints right and then comes up on the left to circle behind the man and break a glass over his head. It’s late and everyone is drunk, him included, which works to his benefit—alcohol makes them sloppy and obvious, but it lights a fire in him, makes him all the more wary for it. Makes him angrier, too.
Dangerous, to drink the way he does, sticking out the way he does. But he’s spent years now, on his own, and he knows better than to drop his guard under any circumstance, drunk or not. And there is so little in his life to look forward too—a man like him can’t begrudge himself too much, for fear of letting life grind him down under its heel. If he drinks a little more than he should sometimes, what of it? He still wakes up every morning. Still hasn’t met a man who could take him down for longer than that.
He slams the last man’s head against the bar, once and then twice for good measure, until the man goes limp in his hands and he lets the body drop to the floor. And that’s six of them down for the count, all unconscious if not worse, bar emptied out save for one man staring at him queerly from across the room.
Billy shifts slightly, squares off his shoulders, waiting on the man to lift his rifle—but he doesn’t. Instead, the man deliberately takes his finger off the trigger and gives his full name, which is enough of a rarity these days that Billy pauses.
When he first came to America, he thought maybe that Americans did things differently somehow, that it was a matter of etiquette that he hadn’t quite grasped yet. But he found out soon enough that the difference lay with him, and not with Americans. All the world over, it seems, people introduce themselves with their full names, quick as anything, in hopes of finding the one person with it printed on their skin. White folk look at him, and it’s not a matter of that hope dying as much as it is an incomprehension that it could even be found there in the first place. No one gives their name to him because he doesn’t matter.
So the man gives him his full name, a proper introduction of the sort that Billy never gets anymore, and Billy lets the words sink in.
Goodnight Robicheaux.
He knows that name.
———
Billy thinks sometime of the life he might have led, had he stayed in Korea. He wonders what would’ve happened if his name hadn’t called him out, drawn him across the ocean. If his mother hadn’t unfurled his right palm and shoved it in front of one of local men, pleading with him to tell her what it meant. Most people in the village couldn’t read much more than their own names, and this was something different entirely: not hangul and not hanja, either.
It was that difference that first drove him south, to China, scraping together enough Cantonese to find passage on a ship that would take him east, to another continent. A new alphabet, a new language, a new set of chances.
Because in Korea, the placement of the name is important. His sits rights across his right palm. Right-handed, he flashes his name inadvertently to everyone, day in and day out. A name like that, placed like that: he’s bound to find the person that wears that name. He’s lucky, he thinks, fifteen and hopeful. Most people don’t get that much. His happy ending’s guaranteed.
That thought’s beaten out of him pretty quickly. Most of the time, Billy just wishes it had happened sooner, before he found himself in this shit hole of a country.
———
“Billy Rocks, I presume?”
Before Robicheaux can say anything more, a passel of men burst through the saloon doors. The men take in the scene and draw quickly on Billy, even though he’s not the one with a rifle in hand. All he’s got is a broken whiskey bottle and a pistol with no more ammunition, knives strewn across the floor. He tenses and thinks: Maybe this is the time I go down for good. Figures that would happen as soon as he met Goodnight Robicheaux. So much for happy endings.
Before the Sheriff can do more than just threaten to exercise rough justice, Robicheaux draws out a handbill with Billy’s likeness on it and drawls out an introduction, clearly waiting for the same in turn. The crowd of men are shocked into better manners, stuttering their names out in turn. Robicheaux gives them all a wolfish half-smile, says he’s a warrant officer. Says that Billy Rocks is worth the same dead or alive, but that the smell is better alive rather than dead, if it’s all the same to them.
Robicheaux looks at him as the Sheriff examines the handbill, with both hands on his rifle. Billy thrusts his wrists out to be bound and thinks, mulishly, that it’ll be easier to escape one man than seven.
Robicheaux rides out of town, leading Billy’s horse behind him, Billy all trussed up and furious. They travel in silence for a few hours before Goody breaks to make camp. After he gets the fire going, Goody comes over with one of Billy’s knives and cuts him loose, says he’s got a proposition for him. Billy agrees—what choice does he have? At his quick answer, Goody gives him that crooked smile again and hands Billy his knife back, handle first, crouched in front of him. Just an arm’s reach away.
Billy takes the blade back, spooked and trying to hide it. It’s a show of good faith, he thinks. He doesn’t know what to do with it.
———
Billy doesn’t end up gutting Robicheaux in the dirt and Robicheaux doesn’t deliver him to the noose.
They travel together. Billy performs and Robicheaux hawks his reflexes, his guns, his exoticism. Test your skill against a mysterious man of the Orient, test your confidence that you’re better than him—a quick draw’s just an easy way to prove it. A lot of men try, and they step into the ring with Billy, sure in the knowledge they’ll win. They’re all wrong. Billy’s still not tired of reminding them of that.
They weather the first few months that way, a wary truce spreading out between them. Robicheaux is cautious, at first. Quiet. The nights and days are broken up only by the sound of hooves on dirt, and Billy finds no great difference between this and traveling alone. Robicheaux’s just one more thing to worry about when he lays his head down in the wild, but one less thing to worry about when he lays his head down in the midst of white people. The quick draws mean money for food, and Robicheaux means Billy gets to see any of that food. Billy still sticks out as much as anything, but the presence of a white man is enough to make people’s gaze slide right over him and onto Robicheaux. He’s invisible in a way that he hasn’t been for years, and instead of making him angry, all he feels is a tired sense of relief.
It’s less clear what Robicheaux gets from the arrangement, although Billy notices there’s no more talk of bounties, no more handbills. Robicheaux starts introducing himself as Billy’s manager, never a warrant officer. For all that Robicheaux starts talking to him in the quiet hours of the day, soft chatter that doesn’t require much of a response, he never says anything about the business that brought him to Billy. Billy takes his time puzzling Robicheaux over in his head.
Billy thinks about Robicheaux a lot; Billy thinks about his name more.
Robicheaux’s name isn’t visible—not on his throat, his neck, his arms. Nowhere easy, not like Billy, with Goodnight Robicheaux sitting plain as day across his right palm, right where a knife would sit. Easy place for a white man to spot English letters where they didn’t belong. When the bandages came off, after the first time they burned his hands for the insult of it, he saw the name there still, clear as anything, despite the blisters and half-healed skin. Maybe it’s impossible to remove a name through sheer force—the name’s still there, under his gloves, but not for a lack of trying.
Billy checks his hands and they come up empty every time. Billy wonders what it means, that Robicheaux doesn’t wear his fate like he does. Billy wonders if Robicheaux has his name at all, if it’s someone else instead, if this was only ever meant to be a one-way ticket to someplace miserable. Even if Robicheaux has his name: what could that possibly look like? There are children’s stories, fantastic tales of magical imposters cast out and identities proven through names. He remembers his mother telling him and his sisters stories, animal spirits wearing human skin, come to stalk men in the day. Some of the stories ended in a grisly death, the spirits cutting out the livers of their misled matches for the sake of a chance at humanity, their own shot at a match. “Only humans have names, never spirits,” his mother would whisper at night, delighting in their shouts and gasps. But some of the stories ended cleaner, the imposter driven out by the arrival of one's real match, a matching set of names proof positive of one’s true identity. His mother used to tell them, at first hopeful and finally despondent: “The truth comes out with the name.”
Billy doesn’t remember the sound of his mother’s voice anymore, doesn’t remember his sister’s faces. But he remembers the stories, remembers his mother weeping as he left, although she let him go all the same. The name you’re born with is the name written on one other person in all the world, and no amount of begging or lying can change that.
Billy thinks: What does that mean for Robicheaux’s name? Is it greyed out and scarred over, like a dead man’s would be? Because the boy he was doesn’t exist anymore. There’s only Billy Rocks now, and that’s not a name written on any other person in all the world.
———
Robicheaux gets hurt, breaks his arm when his horse throws him. Struggling to take Robicheaux’s shirt off so the doctor can see the extent of the injury, Billy sees his birth name: right over Robicheaux’s breast, right over his heart. Solid black, just like his.
———
They spend a few days in a town large enough to support more than one street. It’s there that Billy finds himself surprised by a Chinese laundryman, tucked into the outskirts. The laundryman’s about as startled by this turn of events as he is, so it’s Billy who tips his hat first. He makes to introduce himself as Billy Rocks, but he catches it in time, instead unspooling his old, broken Cantonese to offer up something closer to the truth. The man gives first his name and then a smile in return. It’s easy, it’s familiar, and Billy laughs when Tam sinsaang cautiously chides him about how careless he is with his tones, how incomprehensible it makes him. That’s familiar too.
Billy loses time, talking like that. Robicheaux comes looking for him, sneaks up on them almost, and tilts his head a little at the conversation. Robicheaux offers his name in greeting and Tam sinsaang stares at him hard, the same way Billy figures he must’ve, months ago. Billy says his goodbyes. Billy doesn’t offer any explanations, but Robicheaux doesn’t ask any questions, either. The walk back to the saloon is silent, save for Robicheaux’s low humming, and Billy doesn’t speak again until they’re saddling up the next morning.
“Where to next, Billy?”
“East,” he says, because the sight of a Chinese person’s enough to spook him into running, even though they’re nowhere near a railroad. He misses the company, misses the language, misses the shared memory of a place not-here, but he doesn’t miss belonging to another person. So they ride east because Billy says so, just like they leave town or make camp sometimes because Billy says so. It’s a strange thing, being able to say what he wants, and getting it too.
It’s a week out before Robicheaux asks him: “So you’re not Chinese.”
Billy slants a look his way. It isn’t quite a question, so he waits it out—Robicheaux sometimes works himself into a one-person conversation, given time.
“There was something off about the way you spoke, different from Mr. Tam.” Robicheaux fiddles with his splint, barreling forward: “I’ve heard it spoken before. You sound different.”
Billy frowns. “There’s more than one dialect of Chinese.” What makes you the expert, he thinks, furiously, stabbing at the beginnings of a fire. He doesn’t think, what gives you the right to know anything about me at all, because he knows exactly what gives Robicheaux that right.
“You said dialect, but—are there different ways of writing it?”
Billy looks back at Robicheaux, confused.
“The written language, what you spoke with your family—is it different? Can you read it?”
“Only a little,” Billy says, haltingly, realizing too late where this is headed.
Goody asks him if he can read the name written across his chest.
“No,” Billy lies, “I can’t.”