David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

“Ten years?”

Dewey spits on the floor. “In prison. Fer killin’ a man that moved a little too slow fer mah likin’.”

The bartender speeds up his service and quickly pours Dewey a glass of whiskey. Dewey gulps it down and the bartender pours another one. “Them two’s on me, friend. Ten years is a damned long time.”

“You know what else I ain’t had in ten years? A woman. Somethin’ to stick my willy in.” He tents a five dollar bill onto the bar. “That there’s my last five dollars. What I want, in the followin’ order, is a decent meal, a room for the night, a bottle of that sheep dip and a woman.”

“Well, sir. I reckon we can accommodate you for a night. The dinin’ room’s open. Here’s yer bottle. I’ll see what I can do about that other service.”

“Send ‘er up to my room about ten. I’ll be drunk as a skunk and ready fer love.” He gulps down the whiskey with exquisite pleasure.

Dewey is the only one seated in the dining room. He gulps whiskey. The bartender, doubling as a waiter, approaches the table. “Yes, sir. What would you like? We ain’t got a menu. You tell me what you want and I tell you if we got it or not.”

“I ain’t had a juicy steak in a got-damned decade. I’d like one thick as the Bible and bloody as Jesus. Tell yer cook to take the cow out of the shade a few minutes. That’s all a good piece of meat needs. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

“Yessir. But we ain’t got no steaks today. Alls we got is prairie stew.”

“What’s in it?”

“Taters, turnips, carrots, onions and meat.”

“What kinda meat?”

“I ain’t too sure. The cook’s done took sick and went home.”

“Bring it on, I guess.”

As Dewey waits for his food, his bottle half empty, he quotes the Bible from memory. “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the Earth…. Psalms, one-fourteen, verse five.”

His stomach growls.

The bartender serves the stew with a piece of moldy bread. Dewey takes a bite of the stew. “What is this? Rat meat?”

“No, sir. That ain’t rat.”

“Got-damned prairie dog is what it is. I got fed better meat in jail.” He dumps the stew on the bartender’s shoes.

In one of the hotel’s rooms, Dewey lies in bed, naked and drunk. A lamp burns low on the bedside table next to a near-empty whiskey bottle. He belches.

There’s a gentle knock on the door.

“Come on in, Honey. I’m ready as rain.”

The door opens slowly and a very frail young woman enters, ghastly pale, eyes glazed, uneasy on her feet, fevered. She stands at the foot of the bed, averting her gaze.

“Ain’t you a skinny little thing? Don’t just stand there a’lookin’ at the wall, Honey. Come over here and get under the sheets with me. I like my women kinda bony.”

She sits on the side of the bed and removes her shoes. The effort leaves her short of breath and sweating profusely. Dewey, oblivious to her condition, sits up and begins kissing the back of her neck, reaching around and unbuttoning her dress. “What’s your name, my little prairie flower?”

“Annabelle.” Just saying her name gives her a coughing fit. Still unfazed, Dewey pulls her into the bed and kisses her roughly while struggling to get the rest of her clothes off.

“You oughtn’t kiss me too much. I’m sick with somethin’. It might even be the cholera.”

Dewey ignores the warning and kisses her hard while he fumbles for his member.

At the homestead, Jonah nails prairie dog pelts to the side of the house for drying. The dog nibbles on a prairie dog carcass. In the house Nelly sews pelts together, making a coat. But quantities of hair fall out of the pelts, rendering the task hopeless. James watches her as he plays with a stuffed prairie dog. Nelly shakes her head in disgust, throws her work on the floor. James smells the coat and holds his nose.

“It stinks, don’t it?” Nelly says, flinging it out the front door.

In the barn, Jonah spits in the dirt, stamps his heel and picks up one of the prairie dog cages. “I ain’t givin’ up, fellers. Some day you’re gonna make me richer than God. I just ain’t figured out how yet.”

He hears the rumble of thunder and moves outside. A storm approaches. Fierce winds kick up, lightning strikes. Prairie dogs hustle down their holes. The barn leans perilously.

In the house Nelly checks a pot on the stove as hard rain pelts the roof. In the pot, prairie dog parts boil with hominy and chili peppers. She ladles some into a bowl for Jonah, then another bowl. “James, come here and eat this.”

“No.”

“Eat it!”

James drags himself to the table nearly in tears. “It makes me sick.”

Nelly’s face flushes with anger. “Eat it or I’ll unscrew your navel and let your legs fall off.” James eases a small spoonful into his mouth, gags, spits it back up. Nelly knocks him out of the chair with a hard backhand. He cries, jumps onto his pallet, pulls up the covers.

Jonah samples a spoonful of Nelly’s concoction. She has a sample herself. Both spit it back into the plate. Nelly says, “I’d rather eat a cow’s ear.”

“We got any beans?” Jonah asks.

“I’ve already got some cooked.” Nelly reheats beans at the stove.

Jonah drinks whiskey and ponders things. “They ain’t no good fer pelts and they ain’t no good fer eatin’. They must be good fer somethin’.”

Stirring the beans, Nelly says, “What if you ground the damned things up, bones, innards and all, add a lot of salt and cook it good. I think if you put it up in jars you could sell it to the big city people. They can feed it to their dogs and cats.”

“This ain’t a time fer no hairbrained idees like that, Nelly girl.”

“All right, what if we raise them, lots of them, and tame them. People might want them for pets. There’s a railroad, you know. Up in New York, up in Boston, all those places. We’ll put them on ships and ship them to Nippon, to China, to Europe.” She rolls up her sleeves, scrapes the leftover prairie dog slop into a bowl on the floor. The dog eagerly runs to the bowl, sniffs, but backs away.

Jonah pushes his plate aside. “I’m goin’ to bed. Maybe I’ll dream up a decent idee.”

Hours later, as James whimpers softly and lies sleepless with hunger, Jonah and Nelly sleep soundly, full of beans and farting, until a crash of thunder and a flash of lightning that fills the house with bright blue light wakes them. Nelly looks out the window in time to see a swirling wind collapse the barn into a pile with the screech of nails and the splitting of old lumber.

“Git away from that winder, girl, so I can have a gander.”

Jonah is thankful to see his horse and the ox standing unharmed where the barn had been. “Lordy, lordy. Thank the lord them animals ain’t hurt.”

On the open prairie, the storm has passed. Dewey, slumped on his government-issue horse, makes his way toward the homestead, where lamplight glows in a window. He is wrapped in feed sacks to ward off the wind. He is sick, dying, or both. Vomit specks cling to his prodigious beard. Comanche steps into a prairie dog hole. Dewey slides off into the ankle-deep mud, where his boots become stuck. He steps out of them in his sock feet and plods on with his dangling foot behind the equally lame horse.

The moon looms large and shines brightly. As he nears the house, the dog barks.

Nelly shakes Jonah’s shoulder. “Listen.”

“The little mongrel’s after a prairie dog, Nelly. Blow out them candles and go to sleep. I got a barn to start raisin’ tomorrow.”

Nelly gets out of bed and opens the front door. “There’s a man on a horse, half dead. Who is it, Jonah? Who is that?”