Ishmael Reed - Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

He brings us up there every Sun, and he reads those awful words from the good book. Sometimes I feel so skerry I go back to my bunk and have dreams in which blank-eyed and stupid demons do handsprings on my chest. I think as soon as this season comes to an end I’m going to take my roll and go over to join the Lincoln County forces against that anarchist bandit Billy the Kid. It’s nice and peaceful on the front.

Did you see his latest symptoms? the bartender said. Sits up there on the hill. Got all the servants building a monument he designed for himself. Said he might kick off any day now. Case he feels it coming and wants to get it over with quick. And to add to that each night the coyote howls outside his house and he raises himself and sez: Who’s that! Who’s that howling about my door?

Good evening Marshal.

Good evening Sam, Skinny. Damn, what time of day is it? Looks half and half, like a land assessor’s coffee break. Let’s have something special today. Hows about some of that imported Lacrymose Christi?

Marshal, Skinny said, I was just telling the bartender that Drag is getting spookier than a son of a bitch. He’s a mere whisper of his former self. Each morning we find those effigies on the doorstep. Before you know it he’ll be making an appearance before the Riders of Judgment. He thinks the Loop Garoo Kid has put some kind of so-called magical spell on him or something. While he’s out there building his tomb that new mail order bride of his plays with them funny cards.

Poker?

No, some kind of weird cards, one of em had death on it, with a scythe cutting across the grim reaper’s foot.

You don’t believe in that malarkey do you boys? the Marshal asked.

No I’m a Fanny Wrightite, Skinny said.

And I’m a Baptist, the bartender offered, that pagan nonsense cuts nothing with me.

Just then Royal Flush Gooseman, Furtrapper and sometimes bald-headed Cowthief, and Mighty Dike entered the room:

O.K. all you brush poppers, ranahans, limb skinners, and saddle warmers, this is Royal Flush Gooseman all the way from St. Louis!!!!!!!!

All the cowpokes rose from their tables with gosh, golly stares on their faces. The Marshal and bartender and the foreman were a little more nonchalant, each having been as far as the Mississippi River a few times apiece.

What you need, cowpokes? Rectifyers to heal them bruises, blankets, boots, firearms, bottle of rum all the way from Boston? Come outside and inspect my mule train. You got the money I got the time.

Little hand of poker while you’re at it. I even got posters of that greenhorn President of the East case you want to mount them on your bunk walls and spit tobaccy at em.

All the buckaroos laughed and followed Royal Flush outside to examine his mule train of goods. Some of them were already reaching into their jeans for silver with which to make purchases.

The Marshal, foreman and bartender continued their conversation.

Man, pass me another whiskey. This place is really getting eerie, never seed no town like this; all the planks holding up the buildings seem to lean, like tilt over, and there’s a disproportionate amount of shadows in reference to the sun we get — it’s like a pen and ink drawing by Edward Munch or one of them Expressionist fellows.

Huh?

See, got me talking out of my noodle. What’s your theory Marshal? Skinny McCullough asked.

Well you know me, boys, why if I hadda been at that party the other night instead of at the Law Enforcement Convention up the creek there, it would have been me and the Kid. Hell, me and the Earp brothers use to ambush people and shoot em in the back like they wuz dogs. He’d better not show his snake in Yellow Back Radio.

Big Lizzy the owner of the Rabid Black Cougar entered. A giant square-jawed woman with a tomboy haircut, her flabby breasts hung around her roped in waist. She wore an apron over a drab calico dress, with leggings and boots, and her hands were covered with hair. Below the nose bridge could be seen the faint print of a mustache.

She spoke in a low husky voice that sounded like sand paper rubbing together. She carried a moose over her shoulder and under her arm a Winchester Rifle.

Evening Big Lizzy, what’s that you got with you? Well I’ll be, the Marshal said scratching his head, it’s a moose!

Yeah, Lizzy answered, bagged him up in the hills while I wuz hunting. She swung the moose over her shoulder and onto the floor. Chinaboy go get me some beer mugs out of the latrine so’s I can give the boys a drink and clean up that ear that wuz shot off a couple of weeks back, it’s beginning to smell. I need a drink of Red-Eye after what I saw up there in the hills.

Whaddya see Big Lizzy? Skinny asked.

There was this woman cooking some smelly stuff in a cauldron. I came upon her about the third evening out. She was stirring with some long pole, when all of a sudden this black cowboy come riding out of the shadow and hitched up her skirts and whipped his pecker on her right on the spot. I had to put my hand on the dying moose’s mouth so he wouldn’t make no noise, cause then things really started to freak out.

What happened then Big Lizzy? one of the steerbusters gambling at the table asked as the others put down their cards and gathered around the bar to listen closely to Big Lizzy’s strange narrative.

Well they were on the ground making out and she started to writhe and hiss like a serpent and say skerry things like: mash potatoes all over my motherfucking soul. Then after it was over he gathered her up and they rode off to the cemetery where tombs shone against the moon like white plates.

How did the woman look? Skinny asked.

She was wearing shades even in the night, a black velvet dress and a jade locket. Had long black hair and olive skin. A real beauty. Bilt like a brick shit house.

Hey that sounds like the boss’s old lady, one of the hands said. Let me go up to the ranch and tell him he’d better see about his old lady.

The foreman grabbed the man by the collar:

Hold on you idiot, wait until the season’s over. The way he’s wasting away like he might be in a vile mood. You see how he flogged us the other night, next thing you know he’ll be asking us to milk the cows or something harebrained like that. Be cool till the eagle flies, that way we won’t get in Dutch.

The cowpokes who had gone outside with Royal Flush returned loaded down with goods. One went to the group at the bar.

Geez you know he cleaned us out. Had a little stand set up in the street and had Royal Flushes in poker four times straight, never seed nothing like it!

The Marshal, foreman, Big Lizzy and the bartender chuckled.

What happened to the last wife? Big Lizzy inquired.

She’s up in the hills Big Lizzy, tomato, in the plural these days.

O I see.

Big Lizzy ever since we burnt down the circus strange things have been happening. There was this nigger bulldogger guy who performed. He could bring down steer with his teeth and he used a whip like most men fire a pistol. Anyway he rode off and the townspeople haven’t come down from those devil’s pills them wicked kids gave them, them horrible urchins we knocked off.

Town 50 miles from here the kids were found in caves smoking injun tobaccy and the herd Drag sent up the Chizzum was stampeded by Giant Sloths which is crazy as hell Big Lizzy, cause Giant Sloths haven’t lazed around the Plains of North America for thousands of years. Sometimes I think the whole continent is accursed.

The Preacher Rev. Boyd is going around like the town kook. Nobody goes to his Church any more and he’s weaving some kind of allegorical prophecies.

The Preacher Rev. Boyd entered the bar and through his three week old beard began to recite from a yellow pad attached to a clipboard. He reeled about the room.