David Markson - The Ballad of Dingus Magee

Because it was the bordello, of course, Belle’s, blazing like the tinder box it was. The heat was terrific, but no less so than the light itself which flooded the onlookers as, moments before, it had flooded the very bedroom where Turkey had been pacing incredulously, a hand clapped to his skull. “Defenseless?” he had been crying. “Ruined? Aw now, lady, it weren’t me dragged us in here tearing off her clothes and mine too like tonight were the first time in your life you ever heard there were such a thing as two folks crawling under the same blankets at the same time fer some other reason than they was both tired, or— married?MARRIED?”

He had not even learned the woman’s name. He still hadn’t for that matter, although the sudden inundation of near-daylight breaking over them had postponed the need to temporarily, had thrown even that calamitous insanity into abeyance. Because even she, the deranged horse-faced creature with the abused curl papers in her colorless hair, had become alarmed then, or curious anyway at the sudden furor in the streets, the commotion. No one had been hurt, evidently, it had started upstairs at the rear, and the main stairway had remained unobstructed for a while. But no one seemed to know its origin either. Flames flickered and hissed among the angular roofs, and within the structure itself the holocaust appeared absolute. “But every stitch!” a whore was wailing. “Every stitch a girl owns!”

“Don’t fret youself none, honey,” a miner reassured her. “You could always come bed down under the sluice with me and the boys.”

So he was more distracted than ever when he finally discovered the doctor, still in his own nightshirt and prancing excitedly at the periphery of the crowd. “Lissen,” Turkey cried, clutching at the man’s flannel sleeve, pulling him even further aside, ‘Svhat happened? What happened? How did it—?”

“Don’t know,” the doctor pronounced almost gaily. “But she’s a spit-sizzling sweetheart, ain’t she? Purtiest durned fire I seen since—”

“Oh thunderation, not that!” Turkey protested. “Who gives a Chinaman’s lob about some dumb old fire? I mean before, with Dingus and Hoke Birdsill, when they done what you said they wasn’t never gonter do and I said they was, and then they—”

“Who said they never?” The doctor turned to eye him indignantly. “Why, I could of told you right from the start, it were gonter be jest as spectacular as—”

“But—”

“Yep. Matter of fact I don’t reckon there’s ever been one solitary episode in the whole history of human heroism kin compare with it. Why, the way Dingus jest kept on acoming, letting Hoke git in all them first shots, too, and not firing hisself even when Hoke put one bullet clear through the brim of his hat, and then a next one smack across the fringe of his vest, but jest asmiling that there confident, lion-hearted smile until he finally got on up close enough to lift that shotgun where he knew he weren’t gonter miss, and then he—”

“Redone—?”

“Why, sure. And where was you, you didn’t see it? Ain’t you the eagle-eye weren’t gonter miss a trick?”

“Well, I dint. I mean I were right out there, no more’n forty feet away neither, or at least I were until I got somewhat indulged elsewhere. But it sure dint strike me as near light enough to never see nobody smile, let alone take notice of no bullet hole in a—”

“Well, I reckon you jest ain’t very special in the eyesight category, son. Because I witnessed the whole event clear as well water myself, from down there in front’n my office, and—”

“Your office? But I were ten times closer’n that, and—”

So Turkey was gawking in consternation, even beginning to itch from it symptomatically, when a girl suddenly cut them off with a scream from somewhere beyond his vision. “Belie! I don’t see Belle! Oh, glory be! And it must of commenced up there in her private boudoir likewise. You don’t think—”

“Aw, Belle ain’t in there neither. I seed her go tearing off in a surrey, jest a short spell after all that gun fracas took place—”

“Yair, her and one of the girls, whipping them mares like the tax collector hisself were right back of ‘em, too—”

“But where—?”

Turkey lost the rest of it in the swell of the crowd, but he could not have been less interested anyway, still dumbly confronting the doctor. “But what come then?” he cried finally. “All right, let’s jest skip the durned shooting part of it fer now, I mean after. Who got—?”

“Well, that’s the only aspect ain’t too definite,” the doctor admitted. “But the way I calculate it, it looks like they both must of got punctured pretty severe, since—”

“What? Both? Dingus got—”

“Well, that’s jest theory for the moment, son, because ain’t nobody seen ass nor elbow of ‘em since. But what they done, they both sort of faded away, into these convenient alleys after the actual disagreement come to a halt, you see. So I don’t doubt but where they was headed, they was crawling off somewhere to hunt up separate holes to die in, which a wounded feller’ll do, ‘times, if’n he comprehends it’s hopeless.”

“But—” Turkey had to struggle to keep from shouting at the man now, clutching at his nightshirt again. “Now lissen,” he sobbed, “jest lissen. How come you don’t know no more’n that about it, if’n you claim you saw so durned much of the rest? You ask me, I think you’re plumb so full of bullshit your eyes are brown, is what I think, because—”

“Now what reason would I have fer telling fibs?” the doctor asked reasonably. “Of course, ain’t neither one of’em dead in any except the ordinary sense, on the other hand. What I mean, this were their mortal demises, nacherly, but in another way, a brace of gallant, romantic figures like that, especially that Dingus, why he’s gonter live on in folks’s recollections for just years and years. You might even put it that he belongs to the ages now, like that Henry Wadsworth Longfeller feller, died last year, or General Custer hisself, or—”

Turkey’s jaw hung as if ill-hinged. “Doc, lissen, you feel all right?”

“Why not, son? Truth is, it ain’t every day in a impoverished old man’s career he gets to shed hisself of one unsuccessful line of work and enter into a whole new occupation altogether, I reckon.”

“A whole new—”

“Yep. Gonter start me up a Wild West traveling show, sort of like that one of Will Cody’s I were mentioning. Because you take yourself now, you’re jest a average sort of citizen, wouldn’t you claim? And you would of paid, oh, maybe a cash dollar or two to get the true facts of such a historical occasion, wouldn’t you? Matter of fact that’s how the whole thing come to me, jest after you skedaddled on out’n my office, from when I got to cogitating on how you was so all-fired anxious and all. Now of course it’s jest downright fool’s luck I happen to be the only living soul’s got the gen-u-ine, authentic, eyewitness details, but since it done befell that way I reckon I might as well get me a flat-bottom wagon, and a couple o’ actor fellers, and—” The doctor interrupted himself, glancing beyond Turkey. “Why, howdy there, Miss Pfeffer, glad to see you’re all recuperated again. You heard tell of all the deathless goings-on, I reckon—”

So Turkey saw her again then too, abruptly forgetting not only the doctor for the moment but even his despair over Dingus himself, itching more violently than ever. She approached quite decorously, however, almost sedate now. “Good evening again yourself, Doctor Fell,” she remarked pleasantly. “Yes, a wretched conflagration, isn’t it? By the way, I wonder if perchance you’ve spied the preacher anywhere in the throng?”