Joe Lansdale: The Magic Wagon

"There was this buggy accident, and the Daniels, the ones that had become Billy Bobs mama and daddy, was killed in it, and when that happened, the children started scrambling to get the inheritance. Billy Bob being just a took in child, and there not being no will, didn't end up with nothing but his name. They put him out of the house and on his own.

"Jasmine should have just let it end there, let him go on and live as a white man, but I figure it was eating her inside, being his mama but not getting to tell him. And maybe she thought if he knowed he'd come from black folks well as white, he'd straighten some, not be so hateful toward coloreds, grow up to be a better man.

"Well, she told him. Proved it with that red star on her back, and he went darn near crazy, knocked her down and run off. Jasmine come and got me and I went to get him, had about half a mind to beat him to death, but I found him drunk in a ditch and took him home to Jasmine.

"He wasn't no count even sober, and took to cussing his mama, saying it wasn't so, that he wasn't no nigger, and I don't have to tell you how bad it distressed her, Little Buster. But he was still her boy and she loved him. I reckon I felt for him too. He was my nephew and he didn't ask to be part white and part colored, but I couldn't help but think that boy just had him a bad streak, and knowing what he knew now was just making it wider.

"He didn't go into town no more, he was so ashamed, though there wasn't nobody knowed the truth but him and us. Still, it gnawed at him. He'd eat at the house, cut a little firewood, but most of the time he just stayed wandered off in the woods.

"Wasn't long before Jasmine took the chest cold bad, and I think some of the reason she was so sick was worry over that boy. Well, she up and died. But before she did, she made me promise I'd take care of that boy, see to it that he got some kind of trade and such. He could already read, write, and cipher, so she thought if I could just get him on the right road, he'd grow up and be a good boy. Mama talk, you know?

"I buried her the same day I made the promise, cause she didn't last long after I'd give her my word, and Billy Bob, he didn't even come watch the burying. He couldn't get out of his head that she was the same woman who'd cleaned his messes in the Daniels house, and a part of him-the biggest part-seen her as nothing more than a nigger.

"Like I said, he was my nephew and I made a promise to Jasmine, and I guess I figured there had to be some good in him, being partly of her blood, so I took to caring for him.

"That old wagon I'd gotten from Doc Madonna was parked out back of my shack, which was a thing I'd throwed up next to Jasmines place, and it come to me I could teach Billy Bob the medicine show business, as it was the only thing I really knowed about. Sort of let him run the show, you see. Him looking full white could make it a whole sight easier than me doing it by myself and being a colored.

"That must have been where I messed up. Or maybe it just added to things. But him becoming boss and playing like he was full white just made him more that way in his head. Wasn't long before I'd have to come down on him hard when he got to playing it all too well.

"Still, it wasn't bad for a time. Then he took to reading them dime novels, thinking about them gunfighters and how they was all so handsome-looking and brave-and white-and he was just looking for some reason not to accept being of colored blood, so he'd go off in these dream worlds, and wasn't long before he was pretty much believing them.

"He took up the gun too. Started learning to trick shoot. And it was like he was born to it. The better he got with that gun, worse things between us got. Then you came along and the secret had to be hidden all the harder. Then we got that body in the box, and that stuff he'd been saying about being the son of Wild Bill Hickok really went to his head. Well, you know that part. And there's that curse, and this town… and I'll tell you, Little Buster, I haven't done so good by the promise I made Jasmine. So you can see why I can't just go off and leave him. He's family. He's blood."

I sat there when Albert was finished, kind of dazed. Like someone had bent a fire iron over my turnip.

"But… what can you do, Albert? You've done all there is to do. He ain't worth it."

"I still got to try, Little Buster. You see now why I got to. A deathbed promise is a sacred thing."

We didn't say much else. Just found places to lie down. And though I wasn't in the mood for sleep, I was tuckered, and that fever of mine had gotten worse.

The fever sent me down in a deep well of sleep, and down there were the waters of a dream. It was the one I'd had before, the one about Mama in the house, flying away to

Oz, her red hair flapping like flames. I hadn't had it in some time. The fever I guess. That and the storm blowing, building outside the wagon until it shook and the roof rattled I with rain like a dozen men with hammers beating it with all their might, fast as they could go.

So I was deep into this dream when there came a sound that wasn't part of it. Not thunder or lightning. Just a sharp crack, and it took me a long, deep moment before I realized it was a gunshot.

I got up. I was dizzy and as hot as if I had been bedded in coals. I turned the lantern up, seen that Albert was gone, and Skinny was stirring.

Pulling on my wet pants, I went outside. Albert, wearing nothing but a blanket, was standing by Rot Toe's cage. The tarp was off the cage and the door was open. It looked to have been pried with a bar. Rot Toe was gone and so were the pistols. When I got over close, I seen there was a puddle of blood on the bottom of the cage, mixing with the wooden floor and the rain.

"Billy Bob?" I asked.

"Had to be," Albert said. "I should never have left them pistols in there. Should have known Billy Bob would come for them. Come on, Little Buster, Rot Toe's hurt. We got to find him."

We got dressed in our wet clothes, and Skinny came with us. We looked high and low for sign, but the rain had washed most of it away. We did find a few cracked limbs across the way, a tuft of Rot Toe's hair on a limb, but when we got in the woods and started looking, we didn't see another sign of him.

Those woods were giving me the shakes, and I don't mind telling you. It was like this whole little section of the world, the woods, this damned town, had been given over to the devil as some kind of playground.

Finally we had to give it up, go on back to the wagon. When we got there, we found the back door open and flapping in the wind. And Wild Bill Hickok and his box were gone.

"We was suckered," Albert said. "Suckered to the bone."

About that time, our thoughts were taken from what had happened by cussing. This wasn't your plain old cussing, this was the stuff of a real professional. A fella that had had some practice at it and knew it wasn't just a matter of words but a way of life.

It had just gone light, so we got a good look at what was coming, and it was a sight. Down that muddy street there came a team of six mules. They were pulling a long, flat sled, which looked to have been thrown together in a hurry, and standing at the front of it was a tall, skinny fella with a washed-down hat and a face so thickly overgrown with hair, it looked like a badger's butt. He was cussing now and then to keep rhythm, but the real cussing, the good stuff, was coming from another man.

There was a horseless carriage on the sled, and sitting on the seat, the rain beating down on him, was an old fella with white hair sticking out from under his hat, and a white mustache that darn near covered his whole mouth. He had his arms crossed, was looking straight ahead, and he was cussing every breath, letting it roll out like a poem. Though, unlike a poem, it wasn't embarrassing and didn't make you want to look the other way.