David Markson - The Ballad of Dingus Magee

“What?” the woman demanded then, seeming to scowl in the darkness. “Sheriff Birdsill will be what? Why, I’m just on my way to the jail myself. What are you—?”

“He’s gonter get hisself deceased in this pistol battle with Dingus Billy Magee, yes’m. Smack out in the street here, any instant now, which is why I were suggesting you oughter get youself to—”

“Deceased? Sheriff Birdsill—” She continued to hesitate. “But I’m afraid I still don’t understand. Because he and I are scheduled to be — a fight? With actual weapons? In which it is possible that — that Mr. Birdsill might be — might—?”

“Ma’am,” Turkey proclaimed gravely, “you can take my solemn true oath on it. That feller Birdsill, he’s as good as worm-eaten already. Because when Dingus gets his dander up, well there jest ain’t no—”

But then it was too late for explanation. Suddenly— magnificently, gloriously — a revolver shot shattered the night. Turkey Doolan’s heart leaped, even as he was instinctively whirling to fling himself behind the post again. “Protect yourself, ma’am!” he cried.

But then just as quickly the exultation, the ecstasy, melted for an instant into panic. Because when he searched the street now, when his eyes strained to penetrate the sprawling, interlaced shadows, he saw nothing at all. Horrified that it might be over even before it seemed to have begun, Turkey could have cursed the woman’s interruption, the moment’s distraction.

Then a new shot exploded, allowing Turkey to sigh with relief even as he made out the sheriff, Hoke Birdsill himself, in the flash of powder, as he recognized the frock coat which had hovered above him near the livery stable earlier, the derby hat as well. Darkness enveloped the figure again before the sound ceased reverberating, however. Turkey caught his breath, waiting once more.

The next shot came too swiftly, and from too far off, for Turkey to discern anything in its flash. But with this one he did not have to. “Git ‘im, Dingus!” he cried. “Git the wick-dipping polecat where it hurts!”

Then he actually did see him after all, saw Dingus, and this time it seemed to Turkey Doolan that not only his breath, not only his heart, but the world itself had stopped for the fleeting, immemorial moment. Because it was the vest that Turkey recognized now, the gaudy red-and-yellow fringed Mexican vest that he himself, he, Millard Fillmore Doolan, had worn that very day and which Dingus had somehow retrieved, which like some charmed protective talisman Dingus had felt indispensable for this ultimate deadly confrontation with his eternal nemesis. Turkey recognized it beyond any doubting as the shadowy, sprinting figure darted through the spillage of light from the doorway of a saloon, as the colors flashed in apotheosis to name the headlong dashing presence of Dingus Billy Magee! Turkey trembled with the thrill, with the consciousness of history itself in the making.

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” he cried, although oblivious of his own exclamations now, “that dopey old Doc! This’ll learn him what a feller kin believe in, I reckon!”

Then Dingus was gone (Turkey had seen him for half a second actually, perhaps less) and silence again flooded the night. There was no visible movement now, Dingus could be anywhere, Hoke Birdsill similarly. So when the next shot came, and no mere revolver’s crack this time but the unmistakable boom of a shotgun instead, flashing behind a hooded wagon toward which Turkey was not looking at all, he had no idea who had fired, no way of determining shooter or intended victim. The echo rocked and clattered across the town, a dog yelped in disapprobation — and then the stillness settled again like doom. Turkey’s heartbeat ceased one further time. “Dingus?” he whispered. “Aw, come on, git ‘im, git’im!”

Then a sickening, an impossible idea crossed Turkey Doolan’s mind, one that he could not have conceived of even a moment before. “Dingus?” he said again. Turkey dared not move.

Yet only the silence persisted, the impenetrable dark, through which an immense sadness stole over Turkey Doolan where he crouched. And then with it, from out of nowhere, from out of memory long years buried now, four lines of poetry came into his head, the only lines of poetry Turkey had ever learned, written by that beloved frontiersman Captain Jack Crawford at the death of Wild Bill himself. Doc was an old turd, Doc’s mockery could never detract from their grace, their beauty. As always, they brought tears into Turkey Doolan’s eyes:

Under the sod at Deadwood Gulch

We have laid Bill’s last remains:

No more his manly form will hail

The Red Man on the plains …

And Dingus? If the impossible happened to Dingus, would he too find his bard, would there arise someone to compose the stanzas worthy of this so much nobler life? Turkey felt bereft, a terrible desolation visited him.

But finally now, faintly, at long last he believed he heard footsteps, people approaching distantly. He could not be sure — nor could he bear it any longer. Turkey built himself shaking to his feet.

So he was already feeling his way toward the top step when he became aware of the woman again, when he heard her venture forward through the darkness herself. “What happened?” she whispered hoarsely. “Did it — was it the way you said it would—?”

And then Turkey despised himself for his doubts, for his lapse of faith. Rising to his full height, less in restitution for the affront to Dingus alone than to everything he himself held sacred, Turkey proclaimed, “Ma’am, you could wager your last gold dollar on it. Now a slight portion weren’t too distinct, maybe, but it were Hoke Birdsill got his’n, absolutely.”

“Sheriff Birdsill,dead?”

The woman’s voice was remote, although perhaps somewhat thoughtful also. “Yes’m,” Turkey said, peering into the street anew. “Why, I don’t doubt, if’n we lighted that there lamp we could be the first lucky folks to view his mutilated remains where they fell. Especially since it don’t appear nobody else in town is rushing out awful hasty—”

So he had glanced back once more, waiting to see if she might in fact retrieve the lamp, when a curious sensation of self-consciousness took hold of him. Because the woman seemed to be considering him oddly in the blackness now, looking him up and down intently as if she had not before been truly aware of his presence at all. “Sheriff Birdsill is dead?” she said again.

“Yes’m,” Turkey repeated.

And still the woman continued to gaze at him in that odd way. Then her voice changed, however, became almost weary. “You’ll have to help me,” she said.

“How’s that, ma’am?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Indeed. Because all this excitement, it’s given me — suddenly, yes. This — this chill. In fact it’s—”

“Chill?” Turkey said.

“Ch-ch-chill. Yes. Why, I simply may die on the spot. But if you’ll take my arm, help me back into—”

“Oh, but ma’am, there’s Dingus, and—”

So then he had no choice in the matter, since the woman swooned into his arms. Turkey had to carry her inside.

Thirty minutes later, when he raced to the scene of the fire, he was no more or less immodestly clothed than most of the other townspeople there before him, considering the hour, and even those few who had arrived in relatively substantial attire were already sharing selected garments with the dispossessed prostitutes themselves, a coat here, a shirt there. There was also a prodigality of wholly undraped flesh for Turkey to gape at, in fact, where it bulged and shivered in the fierce light of the blaze. Stark naked, and repudiating any sartorial charity at all, one girl was actually perched screaming atop a hitching rail at die forefront of the crowd, while very near her struggling improbably to disguise a veritable cascade of stomachs with nothing more abundant than a kerchief, an elderly man was shouting hysterically also. Someone identified him as the town mayor. “Our major industry!” he cried. “The foremost attraction of Yerkey’s Hole, wiped away in one fell swoop!”