Ghost Town: A Novel (16 page)

I aint a sportin man. Whut’s happened t’the prizner?

Yu mean thet dastardly hoss thief? Haw. Caint say. He aims a brown slather of juice at a brass spittoon, and it crashes there, making the spittoon rattle on its round bottom like a gambling top. She might could be over t’doc’s fer a purjin so’s t’git her cleaned up inside as smart as out, though after her warshin in here, I misdoubt she needs it.

The others snort and hoot at this. Naw, I think doc musta awready seed her, declares the barkeep, a toothpick stabbed into a gap between his tobacco-stained teeth. He was in here shortly sniffin his finger.

Probly then, laughs another, they tuck her up t’the schoolhouse fer a paddlin.

Whut’s thet got t’do with bein a hoss thief?

Nuthin. It’s jest fer fun. Give the jade summa her own back. And they all whoop again and slap the bar and table.

He pushes out through the swinging doors, his blood pounding in his ears and eyes. Can’t recollect where the doctor lives, if he ever knew, so he heads for the schoolhouse. On his way over, he hears a banging noise coming from a workshop back of the feed store. It’s a lanky hairy-faced carpenter knocking out a pine coffin. Howdy, sheriff, he says, lifting the coffin up on its foot. Jest gittin ready t’eut the lid. Inside, on the bottom, there is a crude line drawing of a stretched-out human figure, no doubt done by tracing around a person lying there. One of the faces from the hanging posters has been cut out and pasted in the outline of the head, and nails have been driven in where the nipples would be. The arms go only to the elbows (probably her hands were folded between the nails), but the legs are there in all their forked entirety. I reckon it should oughter fit her perfect. Whuddayu think?

I think yu should oughter burn it.

The schoolhouse is not where he remembered it either. Instead, he comes on a general dry goods and hardware store in that proximate neighborhood and he stops in to ask if she’s been seen about.

Sheriff! Whar yu been? cries the merchant, a round bandy-legged fellow with a black toupee and his nose pushed into his red face. They’s been a reglar plague a hell-raisin bandits pilin through here since yu been gone! Jest lookit whut they done t’my store! Shot up my winders, killt my staff, stole summa my finest goods, ‘n splattered blood’n hossshit on all the rest! Yu gotta do sumthin about this! Whut’s a sheriff fer ifn honest folk caint git pertection!

Thet’s a question I aint got a clear answer to, he says, staring coldly into the fat merchant’s beady eyes. Right now I’m tryin t’locate a missin prizner.

Whut, yu mean thet ornery no-account barebutt picaroon? She aint missin. Yer boys wuz by here a time ago with her, plain cleaned me outa hosswhips’n ax handles; she wuz in fer a grand time. I think they wuz makin fer the stables. Yu know. Scene a the crime. He turns to leave, but the merchant has a grip on his elbow and a salacious grin on his round red face. I gotta tell yu, sheriff, I seen sumthin when they brung her by I aint never seed before. He glances over his shoulder with one eye, the other winking, and leans toward him, his cold fermented breath ripe with the stink of rot and mildew. She wuz—huh! yu know, he snickers softly in his ear. She wuz
cryin!

He tears free from the merchant’s greasy grip and strides out the door onto the wooden porch, his spurs ringing in the midday hush. He pauses there to stare out upon the dusty town. No sign of them. They could be anywhere. There’s a dim shadowy movement over in the blacksmith’s shed, but that’s probably his horse pacing about. He should just go back to the jailhouse and wait for them. But then the white church steeple beckons him. She gave him a Bible once, he recalls. They’ll have to take her there sooner or later if she wants to go, and she surely will. There’s probably a law about it.

He is met inside the church doors by the parson, or
a
parson, standing in a black frock coat behind a wooden table with a Bible on it, a pair of ivory dice
(REPENT
, says a tented card beside them,
AFORE YU CRAP OUT!)
, a pistol, and a collection plate. Howdo, sheriff, he says, touching the brim of his stovepipe hat. He’s a tall ugly gold-toothed man with wild greasy hair snaking about under the hat and a drunkard’s lumpy nose, on the end of which a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles is perched like two pans of a gold-dust balance. Welcum t’the house a the awmighty. Yu’re jest in time fer evenin prayers!

I aint here fer prayin. I’m lookin fer a missin prizner.

Y’mean thet jezebel hoss thief? She gone missin? A leather flap behind the parson blocks his view, but he can hear the churchgoers carrying on inside, hooting and hollering in the pietistical way. Well she’s probly in thar, ever other sinner is.

Thanks, revrend, he says, and heads on in, but the parson grabs him by the elbow. The pistol is cocked and pointed at his ear. Whoa thar, brother. I caint let yu go in without payin.

I tole yu, I aint here fer the preachin, I’m on sheriffin bizness.

Dont matter. Yu gotta put sumthin in the collection plate or I caint let yu by.

I aint got no money, he says firmly, staring down the gun barrel. And I’m goin in thar.

Dont hafta be money, says the parson, keeping the pistol pointed at his head but letting go of his elbow to tug at his reversed collar so as to give his Adam’s apple more room to bob. Them sporty boots’ll do.

No. Gonna need them boots. If he just walked on in, would the preacher shoot him in the back? He might.

Well how about thet thar beaded black-haired scalp then?

He hesitates. He doesn’t know why he wears it. For good luck, maybe. Like a rabbit’s paw. But he’s not superstitious. And it doesn’t even smell all that good. Awright, he says, and he cuts it off his gunbelt with his bowie knife and tosses it in the collection plate, where it twists and writhes for a moment before curling up like a dead beetle.

Now I’ll roll yu fer them boots, ifn yu’re of a mind fer it, grins the parson goldenly, picking up the dice and rattling them about in his grimy knob-knuckled hand, but he pushes on past him under the flap into the little one-room church, the preacher calling out behind him: I’m sorely beseechin the good Lawd thet yu localize thet snotnose gallows bird, sheriff! Dont wanta lose her at the last minnit and set all hell t’grievin!

Veiled gas lamps hang from blackened beams in the plank-walled room, the air hazy with smoke and smelling of stale unwashed bodies and the nauseous vapors of the rotgut whiskey—drunk, undrunk, and regurgitated—being served like communion from boards set on pew backs. Hanging in the thick smoke like audible baubles are the ritual sounds of ringing spittoons, dice raining upon craps tables, the clink of money, soft slap of cards, the ratcheting and ping of fortune wheels and slot machines, the
click click click
of the roulette ball, and, amid the zealous cries of the high rollers, oaths are being sworn and glasses smashed and pistols fired off with a kind of emotional abandon. Are yu all down, gentamin? someone hollers, and another cries out: Gawd-awmighty, smack me easy! Somewhere in the church, behind all the smoke and noise, he can hear the saloon chanteuse singing about a magical hero with a three-foot johnnie, now hung and gone to glory, her voice half smothered by the thick atmosphere. Sweat-stained hats hang in parade on hooks along the walls under doctrinal pronouncements regarding spitting and fair dealing, rows of decapitated animal heads, dusty silvered mirrors which reflect nothing, and religious paintings of dead bandits and unclothed ladies in worshipful positions, but the only sign anywhere of the one he’s looking for is one of the posters announcing tomorrow’s hanging nailed up over a faro table, the portrait obscenely altered.
BUCK THE TIGER!
it says, and a crude drawing shows where and how to do so.

He turns a corner (there is a corner, the room is getting complicated) and comes upon a craps table with strange little misshapen dice, more like real knucklebones, which they probably are. Set down, sheriff, and shake an elbow, says the scrubby skew-jawed fellow in dun-colored rags and bandanna headband who is working the table, a swarthy and disreputable wretch who is vaguely familiar. His broken arm is in a rawhide sling, its hand fingerless, and there’s a fresh red weal across his rough cheeks, the sort of cut made by a horsewhip. Here, he can no longer hear the chanteuse; instead, at the back by the big wheel of fortune, there is a choral rhythmic rise and fall of drunken whoops, so it’s likely she’s back there somewhere. Not someone he cares to see just now. Go ahaid’n roll em, sheriff, says the wampus-jawed scrub, wagging the stump at the end of his broken arm. Them sad tats is mine. Wuz.

Aint got no stake. But dont I know yu from sumwhars? With his good hand, the wretch flashes a bent and rusty deputy’s badge, hidden away in his filthy rags. Whut? Yu my deppity?

Useter be. But I lost my poke’n then some in thet wicked brace over by the big wheel. I hafta work fer this clip crib now.

Whar’s the prizner then?

Well we lost her too.

Lost her—?

T’thet hardass double-dealin shark over thar, the dodrabbid burglar whut operates this skin store. He’s the one whut give me this extry elbow and my own bones t’flop when I opened my big mouth after ketchin him with a holdout up his sleeve. He sees him now, enthroned behind a blackjack table under a glowing gas lamp, over by the wheel of fortune, an immense bald and beardless man in a white suit and ruffled shirt with blue string tie and golden studs, wearing blue-tinted spectacles smack up against his eyes. He sits as still and pale as stone, nothing moving except his little fat fingers, deftly flicking out the cards. The rhythmic whooping is coming from there and may be in response to the cards being dealt. The motherless asshole tuck us fer all we had, sheriff. Got the prizner in the bargain.

Yu done wrong. She warnt a stake.

I know it.

Whut’s he done with her?

Well. His ex-deputy hesitates. It aint nice. He glances uneasily over his shoulder. Best go on over thar’n see fer yerself.

There’s an icy chill on his heart and a burning rage at the same time and he feels like he might go crazy with the sudden antipodal violence of his feelings, but he bites down hard and collects himself and sets his hat square over his brow and drops his hands flat to his sides and straightens up his back and lowers his head and, with measured strides, makes his way over toward the glowing fat man at the blackjack table. The room seems to have spread out somewhat or to be spreading out as he proceeds, and there are new turns and corners he must bear around, sudden congestions of loud drunken gamblers he must thread his way through, and sometimes the blackjack dealer seems further away than when he first set out, but he presses on, learning to follow not his eyes but his ears (those whoops and hollers), and so is drawn in time into the crowd of men around the blackjack table. What is provoking their rhythmic hoots, he sees when he gets there, is the sight of the schoolmarm stretched out upon the slowly spinning wheel of fortune, her black skirts falling past her knees each time she’s upside down. He tries not to watch this but is himself somewhat mesmerized by the rhythmic rising and falling, revealing and concealing, of the schoolmarm’s dazzling white knees, the spell broken only when he realizes that she is gazing directly at him as she rotates with a look compounded of fury, humiliation, and anguished appeal. It is a gaze most riveting when she is upside down and the whoops are loudest, her eyes then darkly underscored by eyebrows as if bagged with grief, her nose with its flared nostrils fiercely horning her brow between them, the exposed knees above not unlike a bitter thought, and a reproach.

He steps forward, not knowing what he will do, but before he can reach the table, a tall bald man with tattooed hair pushes everyone aside and, tossing down a buckskin purse, seats himself before it. Dole me some paint thar, yu chiselin jackleg! he bellows with drunken bravado, twirling the waxed ends of his handlebar mustache. He’s seen him before, testing out the gallows, except that since then he’s acquired a wooden leg. His partner, the one-eared mestizo, now wearing a bear claw in his nose and an erect feather in a headband, hovers nearby with his pants gaped open under his overhanging belly. I’m aimin t’win summa thet gyratin pussy fer my bud’n me, and I dont wanta ketch yu spikin, stackin, trimmin, rimplin, nickin, nor ginnyin up in no manner them books, dont wanta see no shiners, cold decks, coolers, nor holdouts, nor witness no great miracles a extry cards or a excess a greased bullets. Yu hear? So now rumble the flats, yu ole grifter, and cut me a kiss.

The dealer, holding the deck of cards in his soft smooth bejeweled hands as a sage might clasp a prayerbook, has sat listening to all this bluster with serene indifference, his hairless head settled upon his layered folds of chin like a creamy mound of milk curd, eyes hidden behind the sky-blue spectacles, which seem almost pasted to them. The tinted spectacles, he knows, are for reading the backs of doped cards, the polished rings for mirroring the deal, a pricking poker ring no doubt among them, and the man’s sleeves and linen vest are bulked and squared by the mechanical holdout devices concealed within. When, so minimally one can almost not see the movement, he shuffles, cuts, and deals, he seems to use at least three different decks, crosscutting a pair of them, and the deal is from the bottom of the only deck in view at any one time, or at least not from the top.

The squint-eyed man with the tattooed hair rises up and kicks his chair back with his wooden leg. I jest come unanimously to the conclusion yu been cheatin, he shouts, as the dealer calmly slides the man’s leather purse into his heap of winnings, then takes up the deck to reshuffle it, so smoothly that the deck seems like a small restless creature trapped between his soft pale hands. Behind him, the schoolmarm, bound to the fortune wheel, grimly turns and turns, though now, with the bald man on his feet, or foot, the rhythmic whooping dies away.

Easy, podnuh, whispers the one-eared mestizo, his hand inside his pants. He spits over his shoulder, away from the dealer. He’s awmighty fast, thet sharper. Dont try him. It aint judicious.