Ghost Town: A Novel (7 page)

Some of the women now have their skirts up and are slapping at their victim’s exposed behind with their own nether persons as though to parody the savages’ final indignities, and Belle is groaning and grunting and sobbing something heartwrenching. A most perturbatious sight t’behold, remarks his deputy, unbuckling his gunbelt and stepping down off the porch.

Awright, awright, dammit! he yells. I git the pitcher. His deputy is already down in the hot street, half his fat bum on view, but he pulls up short and turns back, holding his pants up with both pudgy fists. So whuddayu spect me t’do about it?

We want a little lawr’n order round here, sheriff! croaks the squint-eyed old bird with the unholy nose, still whumping away bowlegged at the chanteuse’s backside, her thick bloomers around her scrawny ankles, the tips of her handlebar mustache rising and falling with her movements like greased raven wings. We want justice!
Ungh!
We want some—
whoof!
—dead injuns!

All the womenfolk take up the cry for blood and justice, rattling their pans and broomsticks and firing off hidden pistols, raising a grave agitation. He figures it’s about time to retire from this line of work and is fumbling with his badge when his deputy, buckling up, hollers out: Enuffa this pussywailin, yu ole scuzbags! Jest holt on t’yer britches thar’n let the sheriff’n me parlay a minnit! And he drags him into the jailhouse doorway and whispers dankly: I reckon it’s high time t’call fer a posse, sheriff.

He nods, sighs. Not much choice. The badge won’t come off. Snagged on something. As is he. How it is out here on the edge of things. He remembers something he once saw on a suicide’s tombstone in Boot Hill, some Boot Hill:
HE COME OUT HERE TO BE HIS OWN MAN BUT HE COULDNT NEVER DO NUTHIN THET WARNT NEEDFULL UNTIL HE DONE THIS AND IT WARNT NEED-FULL NEITHER. TOO BAD. RIP
. He turns and, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, faces the crowd. The womenfolk are all gone, except for the dancehall chanteuse, who is still hogtied over the hitching rail, and the street is full of men and horses.

We’re rarin t’go, sheriff!

Yippee! Lets git humpin!

He would, for he’s obliged, he knows, but can’t. Sorry, boys, yu’ll hafta go off without me, he says.

Caint do thet, sheriff. Aint a proper posse without yu.

Well too bad. Caint do nuthin about it.

Sheriff aint got a hoss, boys, his deputy explains.

No? Whutsamatter with him then?

I thought he wuz sposed t’ride the white stallion.

Thet’s right, whar is thet fastuous critter? Go brang it to him, deppity.

The prospect of seeing the white stallion again, and moreover of mounting it, enlivens him and somewhat reconciles him to riding out with the scalping party. The animal looks a bit different in the sunlight, however, more like an old swayback mule in truth, though at least it’s white. No tack, not even a saddle or a bridle, just a piece of rope looped around its knobbly withers. Takes him a couple of tries to get seated, and by the time he’s accomplished it the posse is nothing but a puff of dust out on the far horizon. He gives the decrepit old thing a sharp spur in the flanks and they lumber off in that general direction.

Yu take keer now, sheriff hon! the chanteuse calls out from between her legs as he plods past her, her milk-white arse aglow in the noonday sun. All us righteous folk is leanin on yu!

Shore. Watch yu dont git blistered up, he says.

His old mount must have a short leg. No matter how many times he points its nose away, the town is always over there to his right like they’re circling it. Or rather, like they’re on the rim of some wheel and the town’s the hub, for it keeps rotating with his own sluggish progress, showing him always the same distant view of the chanteuse’s tiny glowing butt over the hitching rail in front of the jailhouse, nailed there like a
WANTED
poster. A most desolate and desolating sight, that pitiful town, clumped there on the vast empty plain like debris blown together by a passing wind, but it won’t go away. Finally, having long since lost sight of the posse and weary of jerking on the rope and kicking the beast beneath him, he gives it over to a peculiarity of the landscape and continues on whatever way this sullen creature means to take him. Once, when he was still alone out on the desert (it comes back to him now, it was either before or after he shot his mustang), he came upon the skeletal ruins of an old covered wagon lying on its side, half buried in the sand. There were only a few tatters of canvas left, no cadaverous remains or abandoned chattel; it had been picked clean long ago. What was memorable about it, though, was that one of the spoked wooden wheels was still slowly turning in the dead air, round and round, as though recalling the clocking of time when there was time. He’d sat there for some time in the saddle, staring at that grinding wheel as if to stop it with his thoughts and so bring this misadventure to an end, but the longer he watched it the further he seemed to be from it, until it wasn’t there anymore and he was moving along again and that town over there was shimmering on the horizon, imitating a destination.

Now, as he winds round it, he hears gunfire, hallooing, the thudding of hoofbeats up ahead, though there’s nothing to be seen to account for it, whatever it is evidently obscured by a slight rise in the land which he hasn’t noticed before. As they trudge up it, it seems to deflate, collapsing back to level flats once more and revealing an old wooden shack all shot to splinters, an old fellow sprawled on the ground in front of it. He pushes his sluggardly rackabones up to where the old man is lying, or maybe it goes there by itself, and he leans over and asks him if he’s all right.

Shore, he groans. I been shot in sixteen places, they’ve cut off my arm’n et it, I got a permanent part in my hair now down t’my neckbone and a arrow up my arse, why shouldnt I be awright, yu dumb two-laigged jackass?

Oh, well, thet’s awright then. I thought yu might be ailin, he says, leaning back, having captured a whiff of the old codger’s reek. He appears to be the prospector type, a filthy eviscerated buckskin bag around his neck no doubt once meant for gold dust, his clothes a patchwork of old rags bound by a belt of rope, his face just a dirty beard with eyeholes in it, squinting up at him into the sun from under the turned-up brim of his soft slouched hat.

Them’s purty fancy duds yu’re sportin, podnuh, he says, all them thar fringes’n tassels’n porkypine quills, yu look tartier than one a them dandified joolbox coffins from out the east, which I sorely wisht I had now fer my imminent layin out in.

They aint mine. They wuz give t’me.

Do tell. A shudder ripples through his prostrate body, if it’s not vermin in his clothes. And them gaudy shootin irons, he gasps when the shudder passes, kin yu use em or are they jest fer showin off?

I kin use em. Ifn I hafta.

Well yu’re a sight fer sore eyes, sonny, I mean thet literal. Even hurtin as I am most elsewhars, thet bedazzlin white tengallon a yer’n plumb makes my eyes ache. Dont tell me—yu must be one a the good ole boys.

Caint rightly say. I aint one t’take sides.

The old fellow cackles drily at that and then breaks into a spasm of hollow chest-raking coughing, bouncing about on the hard ground like a Mexican jumping bean. Aw shit, he whimpers when he can and shakes his head and some sort of muck leaks out his ears. And whar’d yu git thet big white stallion, kid? Thought all them critters wuz wholly extincted. He turns his head and sends some dark spit out through the hole in his beard. Yu wanta sell it? Give yu a thousand bucks fer it.

Thet’s a purty decent offer.

Hafta be on credit a course. Sumbitchin outlaw rustlers tuck everthin I got. I wuz holed up thar in my cabin in a all-day firefight standin off hunderds of em. It were mighty festive fer a time. I musta plugged fifty a them lowdown sneakthief claim-jumpin desperadoes afore I burnt up all my munitions, hadta rassle barehand with the last of em; thet’s when them savages et my arm’n stuck alla these here knives in me. But ifn I’da had another gun at my side we mighta whupped them consarned butt-fuckin no-good rannahans. So whut tuck yu so long gittin here, podnuh?

I only jest got wind of it, as yu might say. He looks around at the barren plain. But whut happent to the ones yu killt?

Dunno. Aint they thar? They musta drug em off. I done em no especial favors and so they wuz purty unsightly. So how do they call yu anyways, stranger?

Nuthin. I’m jest the sheriff.

Thet figgers. They call me Goldy on accounta I aint never had none nor even seed any, wouldnt know whut the shit looked like ifn I did. Other times they call me Parson on accounta how fuckin decorous I talk, or else Mister Dude fer my smart dressin, y’know, though purty soon I spect they’ll be callin me Sleepin Byooty and gittin it right fer wunst. He cackles softly again through his faceful of hair, then suddenly screws up his beady eyes and lets out with a dreadful yowl, heaving about on the ground and clutching the collar of his raggedy flannel shirt with his good arm as though to tear it away. The other arm is gone below the elbow and nothing but gnawed bone above. Oh shitfire, podnuh, this ole cuss is in a mizzerbul fuckin way! he wheezes when he’s able. Damn! Y’aint got a spare chaw on yu, do yu?

Nope. Aint got no kinder provisions.

Tarnation! Yu aint good fer much, are yu, bucko? Someone fer a dyin hombre t’rattle at, thet’s about it.

Aint outstandin at thet neither, ole man. In fact I gotta be moseyin along. Anythin else I kin do fer yu afore I go?

Whuddayu mean, anythin else, yu vexatious shitepoke, yu aint done nuthin yet! But awright, pard, ifn yu wanta be sociable, yu might hep me shift this ruint ole carkiss inside. I’m jest fryin up out here in thet damn sun.

Shore. He slides down off his gully-backed mount. Where he’s been sitting, he notices, he’s rubbed off whatever they used to whitewash the animal, and a scabious black patch is showing through. The old prospector weighs about what his rags and hair weigh; it’s like picking up a dried beaver pelt or an armload of tumbleweed, his stink being the heaviest thing about him. Has to breathe through his mouth so as not to faint from it. Yu’ve definitely gone off, ole man, he grumbles, turning his head away.

I know it. Caint hep it. It’s why they call me Sweetpea. The man has clapped his raw armbone around his neck to hold on, and it feels like he’s yoked hard to something perilous and dreadful. So whut brung yu out t’this burnt-out shithole, kid? Whut set yer dumb ass on fire?

I dunno. Dont recall. Feel like I always been here.

I know whut yu mean. It’s differnt out here, it aint like other places—in fact it aint a place at all, it’s more like no place. Yu think yu go to it, but it comes to yu and, big as it is, gits inside yu and yu inside it, till yu and it’re purty much the same thing. Aint thet sumthin! A right smarta things happen but they aint no order to em. Yu could be a thousand years older’n me, or younger, no tellin which, and it might be yestidday or tomorra or both at the same time. Y’know whut it is? I’ll tell yu whut it is. It’s a goddam mystery’s whut. Thet how yu see it?

Mebbe. Dont meditate on it much.

Nope, spose not. Sorry about the jabber, son, it’s only all whut I got left. But words aint got nuthin t’do with it, hell, I know thet, it’s doin does the talkin out here in the Terrortory, it’s writ in the lawr sumwhars. But alla thet doin, whar does it go? It feels like the real McCoy but it feels like nuthin, too. Like whut’s in my goddam pockets ifn I still even got pockets. Oh I know why
I
come out awright, I know whut set
my
pore butt burnin. Some buggers like livin rough and humpin the natives, and others always hafta try t’make sumthin outa nuthin, but fer me it wuz the plain ole golden legend whut drug me out. I heerd tell they wuz everthin out here a body could want nor even imagine. I heerd they wuz outcroppins a gold twixt trees hanged with chains a precious jewels and rivers a the purest whuskey and fast byootiful wimmen and even the goddam fuckin fountain a youth, and, shoot, I
wanted
summa thet, who wouldnt? I wanted to be, jest like they tole it t’me, out on the adventurous stage a grand emprise. And y’know whut, son? Lean close now, I aint got much wind left.

Mebbe not, but whut yu got is terrible off-puttin.

I know, it’s why they call me Baby Breath, but lissen, thet’s jest whut it is, see, a stage, I finally figgered it out, a fuckin stage fer tootin yer horn on—crikey, it even looks like one—and the wuss thing is, we all know that afore we even set off. So it aint about gold at all nor land neither nor freedom—hoo! freedom,
shit!—
nor civvylizin the wilderness and smoothin the heathen encrustations from the savage mind, oh no, hell no! It’s about, lissen t’me now, it’s about
style
. They aint nuthin else to it. Cept fer the killin, a course, caint even have style without the killin, but thet’s easy, aint nobody caint kill, it’s like eatin and fartin. But dustin em with class, with a bitta spiff’n yer own wrinkle, thet’s one in a million billion. Thet’s the one whut leaves his name behind—his real one or his made-up one, dont matter—but thet name jest sticks like mud’n sucks everbody else up into it, and, son, yu aint gonna git nowhars out here till yu learn thet. Whut I mean t’say is, thet’s mebbe a handsome sombrero yu got pushin yer ears out, but so far’s I kin tell whut’s under it dont amount to a pile a stale horse-poop.

Thanks, ole man, that’s mighty reassurin, specially comin from a stylish gent like yerself. But I aint tryin t’git nowhars.

At the doorway, as if to prove his point, he’s stopped by a skinny long-haired fellow in a black suit and bowler, a photographer by the look of the paraphernalia he’s porting. Dont take the ole coot inside, he says. The light’s piss in thar. I say nuthin about the smell.

He’s dyin. It’s his last wish. And he’s hurtin bad.

Yu dont say. Well it aint gonna matter to him nor nobody else shortly enuf, replies the photographer, with a crooked gold-toothed grin, setting up his gear. Everthin passes, friend, thet’s the good news. Now jest set him on this chair here so’s I kin shoot his disgustin remains fer pasterity wunst he’s finally kicked it.