Robert Coover - Ghost Town

Thanks, ole man, that’s mighty reassurin, specially comin from a stylish gent like yerself. But I aint tryin t’git nowhars.

At the doorway, as if to prove his point, he’s stopped by a skinny long-haired fellow in a black suit and bowler, a photographer by the look of the paraphernalia he’s porting. Dont take the ole coot inside, he says. The light’s piss in thar. I say nuthin about the smell.

He’s dyin. It’s his last wish. And he’s hurtin bad.

Yu dont say. Well it aint gonna matter to him nor nobody else shortly enuf, replies the photographer, with a crooked gold-toothed grin, setting up his gear. Everthin passes, friend, thet’s the good news. Now jest set him on this chair here so’s I kin shoot his disgustin remains fer pasterity wunst he’s finally kicked it.

The old prospector seems to relish the idea of having his photograph taken, even if he won’t be around for the actual event, so he props him up there on the chair the photographer has dragged out of the shot-up shack. Jest lean me sideways, boys, the prospector wheezes, so’s I dont hafta set on thet damn arrow.

The ole fart’s gone all t’hair, the photographer grumbles from under his black hood as he peers through his lens, the greasy black strands of his own hair dangling under the cloth like spiders’ legs. Looks like the ass end of a fuckin porkypine. Fit him out thar with his pick’n pan, why dont yu, make him look half human.

He does so, also loads him up with his antiquated sidearms and sets his slouch hat on square, as the photographer instructs, and then he remounts the swayback mule and prepares to move on. Whut yu need, son, the old codger calls out, is a proper sidekick. He wags his gnawed armbone at him accusingly, or maybe he’s just waving goodbye. It’s about the nakedest thing he’s ever seen. I’da been happy t’oblige but yu come too goddam late!

I know it, he says. Dont seem to of been on time fer nuthin yet. Reckon thet must be my style.

That sets off another fit of cackling and wheezing and dark spewing, a sorry spectacle which he rides away from. The town meanwhile has finally sunk from sight and he is alone once more out on the vast empty desert.

It is dark, another moonless desert night, when he comes at last on the lost posse, locating them not by their campfire or bitter laughter but by the lowing of the vast herd of cattle they have gathered around them, their distant fire flickering in the herd’s depths like the candlelit core of an unstable maze. They’ve filled up the whole prairie with the dumb shuffling beasts; he has to pick his way through thousands of them, trying to avoid their scything horns, egging on his reluctant mount, which is white now only on its underside, away from the weather; it’s like moving through some viscous and muscular sea, shoving against a stubborn tide, though how he even knows about seas and tides, he has no idea. Once among them, he can see nothing else for miles around, and he worries that maybe he’s fated to be rafted here above their pale humped hides forever, or anyway until his raft’s old shanks give way. Gaps open between their flanks, he pushes into them, bumped and jostled from the rear, then pokes and prods with his rifle barrel to pry open new gaps, but his progress is both slow and without sensible direction, that flickering firelight itself now lost to view.

Hlo, sheriff. About fuckin time yu turned up, growls a hollow voice at his back. He bends round in his slope seat, his Winchester across his thighs. The posse’s just behind him, sitting around a roaring campfire by the chuckwagon, smoking, chewing their grub, belching, drinking from mugs and bottles. A gaunt bald-pated scar-faced man, wearing his hat on his back with a cord around his throat, is blowing on an ocarina, making a low wailing noise not unlike the far-off lowing of cattle, which may be all he’s heard all night, except for the sluggish thump and rustle of the chafing bodies. A one-eared mestizo with a crushed bowler and an eyepatch looks up from the old white stick he’s whittling and, the light from the fire lighting up his good eye like a hot coin, asks: Whut kep yu so goddam long?

The sheriff’s been out, yu know, trail -blazin, says another, and they all bark and hoot at that and explode a fart or two.

A wizened bespectacled hunchback in banker’s pants and watch-fobbed waistcoat spits into the flames and says: Well dont be a stranger, sheriff. C’mon over’n rest yer can a spell.

He shrugs and, using his knees and raps of his rifle butt, he slowly pivots his old spindleshanks around toward the fire, but it’s an obstinate creature and by the time he has managed it, cattle have crowded up around him again and the campfire seems to have receded. Between him and it: the scrawny rumps of a dozen or so cows with their tails up in the air.

Haw. Looks like yu’ll hafta fuck yer way in here, sheriff, says a brawny skew-jawed lout with a bandanna headband and a thin black mustache.

Naw, them ole bossies dont fancy the sheriff, grunts the hunchback. It’s thet handsome white stallion whut’s got their tails up.

Thet hoss is a real byooty awright. I feel a kinder lustful hankerin fer it myself.

Boys, I tell yu, says a squint-eyed old graybeard with a preacherly manner, t’bestride sech a hoss as thet’d be like bein born agin!

They all yea-say that campmeeting style and suck worshipfully from their whiskey bottles — Or t’ be bestrid! Yeah! Haw! Aymen, brother! — but meanwhile the cows have nudged him further and further away until he can no longer make out the details up there: just a bunch of dark shadowy figures huddled in their hats around a cold fire, alone in the dark sea of cattle, the chuckwagon a vague glimmerous shape against the black sky like a screen hiding something.

Ho, sheriff! one of them shouts, can’t tell which, his far-off holler all but lost in the shapeless prairie night. Whar yu goin? The beans is agittin cold!

Instead of cows’ bumholes he’s mostly looking at the front ends of steers now, their horned heads down and dangerous. In fact, he realizes that the only reason his poor old mount is still upright is that the steer that has impaled it has its horns stuck in its gut and so is holding up a creature now mainly dead. The campfire off in the distance looks no more substantial than a match being held to a cigarillo. Before it’s snuffed out altogether, he cocks his rifle, shoots the steer below behind the ear, and hops off as both beasts collapse like deflating balloons. Other steers are pawing the ground menacingly but he brings them down with his rifle, then draws his six-shooters and fires away at the lot, clearing space. The sharp shocking report of gunfire in the still night causes those near him to break in panic and they charge off blindly in all directions, pounding into each other and into the massed-up crowd of those around them, spreading terror like a stone slapped into water. Soon the entire herd is on the move but with nowhere to go, the ground quavering under the thunderous buffeting of their hoofs and their colliding bodies like a bedroll being shaken out. Some of the wild-eyed creatures come running straight at him, but he holds his ground, unsteady as it is, bringing them down one by one, pumping lead into their dim cow brains, his weapons growing hot in his hands. The roar of their stampeding is deafening and more than once he is brought to his knees by the violent convulsions of the earth beneath him, but then suddenly the entire herd vanishes into the night like a slate being erased and all is still.

He holsters his pistols, picks up his fallen rifle, reloads it, and begins the long trek on foot to the campfire, stepping over and around the silhouetted carcasses that line his path back like lumpy milestones. Some of the cattle he passes are not yet dead and they gaze up at him pitiably with their big wet eyes, through which he shoots them with his rifle to make their dying short but vivid to them.