Bill Pronzini - Shackles

I fiddled with the radio again while I was at the window and had better luck. The honky-tonk station came in for a visit and hasn’t left yet, at least not for more than a few minutes at a time. It’s staticky and it keeps fluctuating, but it’s audible enough.

Station KHOT, out of Stockton. That gives me some idea of where I am. A Stockton country station doesn’t figure to have all that much range, so that puts this cabin somewhere in the Sierras to the east of Stockton. Yosemite’s to the southeast; so are clusters of little Mother Lode towns and ski resorts. Doesn’t figure he’d have taken me down that far. More likely, this place is in Amador or Calaveras or Alpine county; lots of wilderness in that section of the Sierra foothills, not too many towns, and a sparse population in winter. And the traveling time would be just about right, if my memory hasn’t distorted those long, painful hours on the road.

All right: the Sierra foothills east or northeast of Stockton. That isn’t much, but it’s something. Not having any idea of where you are is like existing in limbo, as if you were already dead.

So I’ve been listening to KHOT and its honky-tonk music. One of the songs they played was “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille,” and for some reason it brought a sudden, vivid image of Kerry. The hurt got so bad so quickly I had to move the dial to get away from it. I found another station, somebody talking, but it was so static-riddled that I could only make out random words and sentence fragments-not enough to understand much of what was being said. When I switched back to KHOT I caught most of a news broadcast. All sorts of things happening on the international and national and local scenes, but no mention of me. That’s not surprising, though. I’m yesterday’s news by now.

The radio is still on, still playing country music. “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.” Very spritely, even though the lyrics themselves aren’t too cheerful. It’s good to hear the sound of another human voice, even a singer’s over a staticky radio. The silence was beginning to get to me a little. Much more of it and I might have started talking to myself just to relieve it.

Music, and the sun shining off clean snow outside. This day won’t be too difficult to get through. Not too difficult.

There are forty-three books in the carton of paperbacks-forty-two different titles. Eleven mysteries, four by Agatha Christie, including two dog-eared copies of Sleeping Murder . Two spy novels. Five adult Westerns and four traditional Westerns and one pioneer-family saga. Two science fiction novels. Six historical romances. Three Harlequin romances. Two sex-in-the-big-city novels. Two show-business biographies. One book on organic gardening. One fad diet book. One history of jazz. And one book on how to avoid stress.

In the carton of old magazines there are a total of thirty-seven issues and seven different titles. Five issues of Vogue , all from the late seventies. Six issues of Sports Illustrated from 1985 and 1986. Twelve issues of Time , random over a five-year period beginning in 1976. Two issues of The Yachtsman , dated June and July of 1981. Eight issues of Arizona Highways , six from the late seventies and two from 1980. Three issues of Redbook , dated March, May, and August of 1986. And one issue of Better Homes and Gardens , dated January 1985.

I’ve put all of the them, books and magazines, into little separate piles along the wall next to the cot. No reason for that-I can’t reach most of them easily without sitting or lying on the cot-or for cataloguing them as I have, other than to pass the time. The first couple of days, I didn’t read anything. I tried once, the second day, but I couldn’t concentrate, could not sit still. Monday morning I forced myself to page slowly through an issue of Sports Illustrated . And Monday evening I looked at a couple of issues of Arizona Highways , until the photographs of wide-open spaces caused the loneliness and the trapped feeling to well up and I had to stop.

On Tuesday I picked out a traditional Western novel called Gunsmoke Galoot . Silly title, but it was originally published in 1940 and that was the sort of title they put on Westerns back then. I managed to get through one chapter in the morning, another in the afternoon, and still another before I went to sleep. Yesterday I was able to sit still long enough to read two chapters at a time until I finished it. I remember very little about the plot or characters-just that the writing had a nice pulpy flavor that was comforting, almost soothing.

I’ve never read Westerns much, books or pulps, though I don’t have the attitude of some people that they’re childish and inferior to most other kinds of fiction. Of the more than six thousand pulp magazines I’ve collected over the years-

My pulps. What will happen to them if I don’t get out of here? What will Kerry do with them? Sell them off? Put them in storage? And the rest of the things in my flat… books, clothing, furniture, the accumulated detritus of a man’s life? And the flat itself, what about that? The rent is paid until the first of the year; my landlord is a generous sort, he won’t start pressing for back rent until February, but what then, when he does start pressing? Will Kerry pay the rent, on the slim hope that I’ll be found alive or return on my own? or will she-

No, dammit, it’s not going to work out that way. Stop trying to look ahead! Today is what matters. The here and now.

Of the 6,000 pulps in my collection, only about 50 or so are Westerns. Dime Western, Star Western,.44 Western, Western Story . All are issues from the thirties and forties, most with stories by writers who also wrote detective stories: Frederick Brown, Norbert Davis, William R. Cox. A few have stories by Jim Bohannon, a writer who used to contribute Western detective stories to Adventure . I met him at a pulp convention in San Francisco a few years ago-the same convention at which I met Kerry and her parents, Cybil and Ivan, both former pulp writers themselves. Cybil wrote hard-boiled private-eye stories under the male pseudonym Samuel Leatherman; Ivan wrote horror stories-still writes them at novel length. It’s an appropriate field for him because he’s something of a horror himself. He hates me because he thinks I’m not good enough for Kerry, and too old for her besides; I hate him because he’s a grade-A asshole and how did I get off on Ivan Wade? The subject here is Westerns, for Christ’s sake.

I used to like Western films and serials when I was a kid. Every Saturday my ma would give me a quarter and send me off to the neighborhood movie theater, alone or with friends. That way, I wouldn’t be home when my old man… the hell with my old man, I’m not going to write about him . I liked the crime films best, the serials about detectives like Dick Tracy, superheroes like the Spider and Captain Marvel, but I would sit just as engrossed through a Gene Autry or Roy Rogers or Three Mesquiteers film, or chapters of Western serials. I remember one serial, I think it was called Adventures of Red Ryder . It had an Indian boy in it-Little Beaver. I envied that kid as much as I envied the pulp private eyes when I got older. I wanted to be Little Beaver, run around having exciting adventures, wear a headband with a feather in it, Jesus that film made an impression on me. I must have been eight at the time, maybe nine. Little Beaver…

Now I seem to have drifted into childhood reminiscences. What the hell is the point in that? Or in wasting any more paper on the subject of Westerns? It may pass the time but it doesn’t seem to be doing me much good otherwise. Besides, my fingers are starting to cramp up.