David Markson - The Ballad of Dingus Magee

But now Dingus was attending more to the tone of the man’s voice, its resonance, than to the content of his speech. “I dint mean preaching,” he explained. “You reckon folks’d hear you from a fair piece, if’n you had a sort of public announcement to make — say a announcement worth maybe twenty cash dollars?”

The preacher had been raising the jug. He dropped it as if struck. “Brother, leave us not bandy words. For twenty dollars cash currency I would hang by my only thumb at Calvary itself, hind side to.”

“Never mind getting no horse soldiers involved,” Dingus said. He retrieved the oldest of his Colts, hefting it momentarily. Then he tossed it pointedly onto the shuck mattress.

So then the preacher sat absolutely without movement, staring at the weapon, for perhaps ten seconds. “Fifty dollars,” he proclaimed finally. “The Lord couldn’t condone mayhem for less.”

“Ain’t mayhem neither,” Dingus said. “That there’s your pay. Twenty- two dollars, more like, standard saloon pawning price on the model.”

So the preacher inspected it then, trying the hammer gingerly several times. Then it disappeared all but miraculously beneath the shucks, as the man himself arose and stepped decisively toward the peg from which his clothes were hung. “The Lord’s will be done,” he intoned.

Dingus considered his antiquated watch as the man dressed. It was approximately eleven-thirty.

“Starting in jest about fifteen minutes from now,” he said, “all up and down the main street, but most especially up to Belle’s. Loud as you kin call it out, I want you to inform folks that Dingus Billy Magee done escaped jail again. And that he’s putting it to Hoke Birdsill to meet him fer a pistol shoot.” Dingus thought a moment. “Yair. Pronounce it fer out front of the jailhouse, at midnight sharp.”

Brother Rowbottom could not have been more unimpressed. “Feller name of Dingus Freddie Magee has got escaped again,” he repeated without emphasis, “and he hereby challenges Hoke Birdbelly to a fight with hoglegs, front of the jail come midnight. That the entirety of it?”

Dingus nodded, still contemplative. “But you pronounce it jest afore twelve up to Belle’s, that’s the crucial part. Folks’d be more interested in the chance they could see a bloody murder, than in jest some common everyday one-dollar poontang, don’t you reckon?”

“Ain’t mine to judge,” the preacher said. “The Lord sends me His missions in devious ways. You plumb sure I kin get twenty-two dollars on that Peacemaker single-action? Firing pin’s a mite wore, there.”

“You don’t,” Dingus said, “and somewhat later’n midnight I’ll give you payment for it myself — in dust gold or minted silver or paper currency or any other form you so desire.”

The preacher eyed him opaquely, buttoning a threadbare frock coat. Then he belched again.

“Amen,” Dingus said.

“So you’re a lamb of the Lord after all, eh?”

“Jest insofar as nature is concerned,” Dingus said. “Trees and clouds and such, sort of transcendental.”

So this time the preacher broke wind. “Emersonian horse pee,” he grunted.

But Dingus had already closed his eyes, leaning against the wall until he heard the man depart. Then, fingering the most recent bullet hole in his trustworthy vest, and with his young brow furrowed from the gravity of it all, he commenced to devise the remainder of his strategy.

“So even if’n I never had no mother at that,” he remarked aloud, “ain’t nobody gonter be able to say Dingus Billy Magee dint truly apply his talents in this life, after all.”

But certain sensuous remnants of the preacher’s flatulence were abruptly wafted toward him then, and he had to go hurriedly elsewhere.

Turkey Doolan was to see most of it. Nor would he ever forget.

At first, in the dim cast of light from a lamp in an adjacent room, he did not remember where he was. Then, when he recognized the doctor’s office, when he found himself shirtless and with a fresh neat swath of bandage below his left armpit, he endured a moment of acute anxiety. He sat up gingerly, exploring flesh with his fingertips. But there was little pain, even when he pressed forcefully against the gauze itself. So then a new expression came into his freckled face. It was a look of unrestrained enchantment. “Boys,” Turkey said, and almost aloud, “yes sir, I dint jest know Dingus Billy Magee, but him and me was such fond chums — why one time over to the New Mex, darned if’n that Hoke Birdsill dint go and near assassinate me fer Dingus by mistake!”

Breathing deeply, deliciously, Turkey stood. Then he paused again, gazing at his boots where they lay beneath a chair, at his shirt folded on the seat. “Doc?” he said tentatively.

The vest was nowhere to be seen. Turkey’s eyes darted about the small, sparsely furnished quarters. “Now where the hang—?”

So when he heard the sound again, not realizing that this was what had awakened him to start with, he paid no attention, or not immediately. Then, thunder struck, he bolted to the window.

“Escaped?” he muttered. “And done challenged Hoke Birdsill to a—?”

Turkey could barely discern the shouting man himself in the outer darkness, other than to judge him to be tall and evidently bald. He was already some distance away, moving in the direction of Belle Nops’ bordello, although his voice was remarkably sonorous. “Dingus got escaped again?” Turkey repeated. “Again?’ 9

But it wasn’t that, wasn’t the puzzlement that mattered. It was the remainder of the announcement, as its overwhelming significance dawned upon him, that staggered Turkey Doolan. “Right out there?” he said. “With pistols? At twelve mid—”

Turkey was already fumbling for his watch (actually the property of one P. Strom, or thus it was engraved; Turkey had found it atop some loose sheets from a farmer’s almanac years before, in a latrine behind a Lubbock restaurant). The watch read only eleven-forty, but Turkey snatched up his boots and shirt nonetheless. “Because I wouldn’t take a chance on missing this fer all the free nooky from here to Medicine Hat,” he declared. He rushed into the next room.

So there sat the doctor in his nightshirt, calmly drinking something from a steaming mug as if nothing of earth-shaking consequence were about to occur at all. “Why, howdy, son,” he said pleasantly. “Feeling ballsy after your sleep, are you? Go help yourself to a spot of coffee—”

“Coffee?” Turkey stared at him incredulously. “Now? When the notoriousest desperado and the hardest-rock sheriff in the whole untamed West is gonter meet each other face-to-face in a gun shoot? How could any human bean in his right mind sit there drinking coffee at a time like—”

“Now, son,” the doctor said, his look inexplicably one of amusement also, “I reckon Dingus Billy Magee is up to some mischief or other right about now, sure as snakes suck eggs.

But you don’t rightly expect that either of them two critters is imbecile enough to parade on out there into that pitch-black street and—”

“Huh?” Turkey said. “Well, you heard the feller calling it out, dint you? Why, this is a event folks’ll be recollecting about fer jest years, like they does about all Wild Bill’s gun battles up to Kansas, or—”

“Wild Bill?” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Wild Bill Hickok? Now where’d you ever hear about him having a actual—”

“Hear?” Turkey stomped into a boot. “Jest every darned place I ever rode, is all, about how he faced down more foes’n you could count, and—”