David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

The homestead. The rat terrier, a permanent resident, sleeps in the shade of the horse, which obligingly remains perfectly still. Repairs have been made on the house and outhouse; the barn has been propped up with cottonwood logs. The windmill, greased, turns freely, keeping the well full of water. Not far from the house, Jonah plows sod behind his ox. From a safe distance, prairie dogs watch him work. From an even safer distance, Six Toes and Bow String also watch.

Bow string says, “The white man is a working fool.”

Six Toes adds, “And his god is a slave driver.”

They stifle laughter.

Dewey, having grown a bushy mustache, watches carpenters work on a gallows and a coffin, then makes another mark on the wall with lampblack and lies on his cot to read the Bible aloud amid the din of prisoners coughing, wailing, moaning, fighting, crying and swearing. “This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun…Yeah also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.” He closes the book and thinks. “I’ll eat my hat and shit it out a shoe if this book ain’t all true, ever’ got-damned word of it.”

With a thump, a pair of grasshoppers land on the window bar and begin the mating process. Dewey, celibate all this time, is quickly aroused by the sight. Gradually his hand slides inside his trousers and he fondles himself.

A room in a well-to-do Kansas City home. Nelly, about thirty, sits before a mirror, sketching herself on a piece of letter-size paper. She looks at the sketch, seems satisfied. She applies lipstick, makes an imprint of her lips on the paper, folds it, stuffs it into an envelope along with a letter. She lays the envelope on a table next to a newspaper opened to an ad for mail-order brides. She addresses the letter to: Mr. Jonah Binder, Dodge City, Kansas.

A knock at the door. “Nelly? You in there, girl?”

She’s frightened, hides the newspaper and letter. “Yes, Papa? What is it?”

“You know, Sweetheart.”

“Not tonight, Papa. Please.”

“How come, Honey Pot? You know how empty my bed is without your mamma. You know how I get the longin’.”

“She’s been gone five years, Papa.”

“Lemme in!”

“No! I don’t care about your longings anymore.”

“The hell you say!” He forces the door open and enters, a paunchy man in his sixties. He removes his tie, backs Nelly into the bed.

“Please. Don’t do it, Papa.”

“You look just like your mamma, darling baby. You’ve got the same set of teets.”

“I’m not her!”

He unbuttons his shirt. “Take off them clothes, now. Don’t make me do it. I might hurt you.” He takes a big swig from a flask.

Realizing she has little choice, she surrenders and undresses.

A wooden walk in front of the Hotel Dodge & Saloon. Jonah’s ox wagon pulls up. In the bed is a cage containing a dozen prairie dogs. Jonah hops out, carries the cage through the rear door of the building into the kitchen, a dim, gloomy room with steaming pots everywhere and a layer of grease on every surface. An iron pot of thick, brown stew bubbles on a wood stove. On another burner, a pig’s head boils. Cockroaches run along the wall.

A Chinese cook, Mr. Ling, chops onions and carrots with a cleaver. A mouse feeds on a piece of carrot at the edge of the chopping block. With a sudden, deft strike of the cleaver, Mr. Ling chops off the mouse’s head, sweeps the pieces to the floor with the cleaver blade, and resumes chopping carrots.

Jonah enters, sets the cage down. “Here’s a dozen, Mr. Ling, fer the stew pot.”

Mr. Ling takes one of the prairie dogs from the cage and twists its neck until it breaks. He lays the carcass on the chopping block and feels it for fatness. He slits open the belly and smells the innards. “Mmmmm. Velly flaglant.”

“Them’s as good as eatin’ in Kansas gets. I’ll let ‘em go real cheap. The whole bunch fer a dollar. Now don’t go sayin’ there’s prairie dogs everywhere and how they’re not worth spit. Lookee, it ain’t the dogs yer payin’ for — it’s the trappin’. I got special methods.”

“Okay. One dollar.” He gives Jonah a dollar, opens the cage, dumps the prairie dogs into a sack.

In a grocer’s, Jonah loads up on flour, beans, coffee, tobacco and whiskey. He lays all his money on the counter. “My bride’s comin’ today from Kansas City.”

The clerk says, “Ain’t that nice.”

“She’s a looker, too. We’ll have us some babies, I ‘spect.”

“Ain’t that nice.”

The train station waiting room. Jonah enters, approaches the station master. “Yeah, feller, what do you want?”

“Pardon me, sir, but is that train from Kansas City runnin’ on time?”

“Far as I know, it is. Can’t guarantee they’ll all have their hair, though. Some Kiowas killed some people out by Salina. Whole family. Took scalps. Even the baby’s.”

“Good Lord, don’t be goin’ on thataway. I got my mail-order bride on that train.” He displays her sketch. “That there is a picture she drew of herself, lookin’ in the mirror. Ain’t she the prettiest thing you ever seen? She wants to homestead, like me. Don’t care for city life a’tall. I got some plans, too.”

“Don’t we all. What’s yorn?”

“Prairie dogs. I got a way of trappin’ em. You git a nail keg, you fill it half with sand. You turn the keg over a prairie dog hole. Course you gotta make it so you can open the top when you got one trapped. See, a dog will burrow up through the sand to see what’s goin’ on, but he can’t dig his way down again. He’s trapped.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why in the dickens can’t he dig back down again?”

“Cause as fast as he can dig, the sand’ll fall back in. He can’t get nowhere. I come along and I open the top and there he is. I got me a prairie dog.”

“And then what you got? Somethin’ that ain’t worth the sand you wasted.”

Jonah thinks this over.

Outside the train station, sundown. Jonah sleeps in a chair leaning on the wall as the train pulls in. He looks at Nelly’s sketch as he paces the platform, waiting for her to get off, which she does, the last of ten or fifteen passengers.

“Hello, Nelly.”

“Hello, Jonah.”

They stare into one another’s anxious eyes and kiss awkwardly.

One wall of Dewey’s cell is completely filled with lampblack smudges. With long hair and a full beard now, Dewey reads from the Bible by lamplight as it rains and thunders outside. “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” He muses a moment. “Now what in the hell is Isaiah goin’ on about here? Whose cheeks are we talkin’ about? And who’s this that’s fixin’ to pluck the hair out of ‘em? And what’s all this shame and spittin’ about? Heck, I’m beginnin’ to think this book’s just a pile o’ snakeshit.”

The office of the Justice of the Peace in Dodge City. Jonah and Nelly exit, smiling, elbows locked, Jonah waving the marriage certificate. Behind them the door closes and the OPEN sign is turned to CLOSED.

“I guess we’re hitched, Sweetheart.”

“Forever?”

“Of course, Darlin’. Forever.”

They leave town on Jonah’s wagon.

Dewey sits crosslegged on the floor of his cell, carving nuggets out of soap with a long thumbnail that he’s let grow for this very purpose. A drawstring pouch made from a bandana and a bootstring sits in front of him on the floor. When he’s finished carving the pretend gold nugget, he drops it into the pouch and smiles with childish glee.

A small area of Jonah’s homestead has been plowed, enough to support a modest garden, though its furrows are littered with prairie dog burrows. Stove wood is stacked neatly near the front door of the house. The windmill is dead-still as Jonah and Nelly arrive. The terrier runs from the barn and barks at Nelly, then bites her ankle. Jonah kicks the dog into the air. “You nasty little viper! Get on outta here…. He ain’t mine, Darlin’. He came with the place.”