David Markson - The Ballad of Dingus Magee

“We’ll both do it,” Belle decided abruptly. “Why, sure. A gentleman and a lady planning to get spliced, they ought to start sharing their satisfactions early anyways—”

“Married?” Dingus popped back into the conversation eagerly. “Well, say now, let me be the first to—”

“You’d put a curse on it,” Belle said. “And that’s a minute gone now. You better get to praying, I reckon.”

“Oh, I weren’t never the praying sort,” Dingus went on undeterred. “Jest sort of a old Emersonian, were all. But lookie here, I ain’t truly a bad nipper at heart. Matter of fact I doubtless wouldn’t of never wound up the way I done, if’n I’d had a mother to guide me in this life. And jest to show you there’s no hard feelings — why, here, I’d be obliged if’n I could give you a wedding present. It’s—”

The shotgun lifted threateningly as Dingus fumbled in his skirts, but it was only a watch. “Don’t keep time too hot,” he admitted, “sort of antique. But it’s all engraved right smartly too. Here, what it says, it’s ‘To my darling Ding, he rings the bell.’ It were my—”

“What?”

Belle snatched the object from his hand. Then, inexplicably, staring at it, she turned livid. “Why, you immoral, dirty-livered skunk, where’d you get this? You even went and stole this somewheres too, didn’t you? Well, hang it all, that’s the end now, the absolute mother-loving end. Because if—”

“Huh?” Dingus backed off more in perplexity than protest as she glared at him. “Now confound it, Belle, I never done stole it neither. Like I jest started to remark, that watch belong to—”

“Lissen, you lying-mouthed little pussy-poacher, I gave this identical timepiece to somebody exactly twenty years ago, before the ornery polecat went and lost me to a white slaver in a faro game and started me on the road to ruin. Here, where it says he rings the bell, it was supposed to say Belle, with an e, but the jeweler made a mistake. From me to him, my first husband. And Ding was short for—”

“ Dilinghaus? You? You done give that watch to—”

“What? Dilinghaus, sure. Of course. But how the thun-deration would you know that, you conniving little—”

“But that were my daddy’s name. That were—”

“Your da— But then — but then you’re— not the beautiful baby son they made me leave behind? Not the baby I’ve wept for in my secret misery for all these long, long years—”

“And then you’re my — my—”

“ My baby! Oh, my precious, precious baby!”

“Mommy! Oh, my very own, my long-lost mommy!” Belle threw aside the shotgun. Dingus discarded the Colt he had been surreptitiously manipulating from beneath his skirts. Hoke stood amazed with the wonder of it, but already beginning to sob for a sentimental old fool himself, as they rushed to each other, as they embraced.

It was well after midnight before he was able to slip from the farmhouse. Stealthily he led one of the horses to the road.

There were no saddles, so he was still busily improvising a workable bit and reins when Dingus approached with another of the animals. For a time they gazed at each other without expression.

“All right,” Hoke said finally, “I’ll say it quick. And it ain’t even the idea of getting hitched, which maybe I done been a bachelor long enough to accept anyways. And doubtless I could even get used to you being a part of it. But not when she made me kiss your boyish brow goodnight like a daddy oughter, which is jest one step more’n any self-respecting man could take. So meantimes what’s your reason?”

“All that talking she done about the three of us turning respectable,” Dingus said. “About going somewheres that nobody knows us and living like good Christian folk. Because I been there before, with every danged relative I ever got tied to. I’ll take my chances on remaining a orphan, if’n it’s all the same.”

“How far will she chase us, do you reckon?”

Just south of San Francisco, an ill-guarded freight office supplied the price of their fares. She emptied several lethal devices from the wharf about seven minutes after the gangplank was raised, but the damage to the smokestack was nominal. They had to share a cabin with two other gentle-men, having been unexpected, and while they got on with both, it was the youth, Doolan, for whom they felt the larger affection. Rowbottom’s flatulence drove them above decks often. Otherwise poker for modest stakes occupied them until Valparaiso.

The Ballad of Dingus Magee

It was dusk that night when he rode on in

To the town of Yerkey’s Hole—

He was only a boy just turned nineteen,

Yet the gallows was his goal.

For Dingus Magee was a desperate lad,

The worst New Mex. then saw—

‘Twas plain he’d come with aroused intent

To trample on the law.

But the law in town was a sheriff bold,

Hoke Birdsill was his name,

And Hoke himself was no man’s fool

In that deadly shooting game.

So both were calm, and hard as rock,

Though bullets flew like hail,

As they staged their mortal duel that night,

In the street before the jail.

And then what occurred was an awesome thing

That cowards fear to tell—

For some say Hoke took so much lead

He sank clear down to hell.

But others remark ‘twas queerer still

For Dingus Magee, alas—

They claim he crawled off limp to die

While caressing a maiden’s knee.

Yet none can name, and name for true

The place where each was laid,

And none can judge, are heroes born,

Or are they only made?

But sometimes still, in Yerkey’s Hole,

Where Belle’s Place used to lie,

It seems you can hear the banging yet—

“That’s them!” old-timers cry.

Refrain

But sometimes still, in Yerkey’s Hole,

& Cetera.

Mrs. Agnes Pfeffer Fiedler

Yerkey’s Hob, 1885