The Warlock Rewritten

Eons ago, back in college, I had a part-time summer job at our local educational TV production center, screening TV shows that had been sent to other stations to be broadcast, then returned, so we could clean them and see if they had too many scratches or other defects to allow them to go out to yet another station.  I absorbed a lot of information that way, including a series entitled THE WESTERN WAY?a documentary program about the realities of the Wild West.  One program was about the Lincoln County War in New Mexico; the next was about one of the young men who got caught up in the fighting, a teenager named Henry Antrim, also known as William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid.  He made for good copy in the newspapers back East, so he became more famous than he may have deserved.

Six months later, I found a playwriting contest about law and society?why are laws necessary?  It fired my imagination and made me want to write an entry?the war in Lincoln County was very much an example of what happens when the courts become so corrupted that for all intents and pruposes, law ceases to exist.  I was fired up and ready to write, but my final undergraduate year interfered, and of course, by graduation time, the contest was over?the first time I missed a contest deadline, but not the last.  I became even more determined to write the play, even though the project very quickly became a novel, albeit an unwritten one.  I had to keep putting it off and putting it off, but I kept gathering the odd piece of information about the Lincoln County War, a snippet here and a scrap there?for example, an old folk song that ended with Billy being, "Shot down by Pat Garrett, who once was his friend..."?an item I had noted in the TV program.  I imagined a plot in which Billy and Pat became friends fighting for the small farmers against one of the cattle barons but, after their side went out in a blaze of glory (literally), Pat opted to stay within the law and do what he could to reverse its corruption, while Billy, bitter and angry, decided to from his own gang and fight the corrupt politicians from the outside, bringing justice where the law would not.

It sounded good, until I found out that Pat didn't even come to town until after the war was over.  He and Billy weren't comrades in arms?they were drinking buddies who both enjyed gambling.  Pat became sherrif because it was a good way to get into politics, not out of any ideals about law being the only way to keep people from killing each other.

Somewhat disillusioned, I shelved the project indefinitely?but kept gathering tidbits when they showed up.  I found there had been many movies and books about Billy, but none of them made the point I wanted to make.  After all, why should Hollywood let a little thing like historical fact get in the way of a good story?  Then my wife gave me a really great Christmas present?an extrenmely well-researched history of the War, written by Frederick Nolan.  I found out that the background of the War was much more complicated than I had realized, but really turned out to be a matter of three men trying to become rich.  Billy got caught in the crossfire.

Then I took a teaching job in New Mexico, and found that Billy the Kid was still part of the culture there, and that the Wild West was still an ever-present background.  An old man told me that there are four thing you don't talk about at in polite company: sex, religion, politics? and the Civil War.  New Mexico was one of the places where ed-Confederates fought it out with carpetbagging Yankees.  John Chisum, the man who bankrolled the losing side of the Lincoln County War, has a statue in the town square at Roswell.  A friend of mine took me to visit Santa Fe, and on the way, took me to see the graves of Bill the Kid and, on either side of him, two of his closest pals.

Then, to top it off, the Governor of New Mexico indicted Billy the Kid for the murders of the jailers who had guarded him while he was awaiting hanging.  Since Pat Garret had killed Billy before he could be brought to trial, he was fair game for the prosecutor.  Governor Richardson even appointed an attorney for the defense.  The story was still alive and well, even though Billy wasn't.

I was struggling to fit these last few final facts into the story when I realized that I didn't have to?if Hollywood didn't need to be limited by the actual events, I didn't have to either?if I told the same story as science fiction, I could change the facts any way I wanted.  With renewed vigor, I took another look at the facts?and came to a screeching halt.  There's an old rumor that Garrett did let Billy go, on condition that he leave the territory and never come back.  In fact, several men have claimed to be Billy grown old.  Very unlikely, of course?Billy's corpse would have given Garrett's career an amazing boost.  Why would he have let the Kid go?

Almost impossible to explain, in a historical novel?but very easy, if I was fictionalizing the events anyway.  Instead of Billy the boy desperado, make the central character a young woman.  The sheriff could care too much about the teenager to kill her in cold blood.  But how could he explain why she was still alive?

Why bother?  Just let her disappear.  She can go to the far side of the Asteroid Belt, or the moons of Saturn, or maybe even Alpha Centauri?as long as she doesn't come back.

So I've done one more version of the story of the Lincoln County War and maybe someday it will be published.  If it is, I hope you'll enjoy it.