Robert Coover - Ghost Town

Although he is a man of few spoken words or opinions, his head is ever full of troubled thoughts, and, in spite of the blow it took, it has not lost any of them. He is a drifter and one whose history escapes him even as he experiences it, and yet to drift is to adventure and to overstudy one’s history is to be ruled by it, and he is above all a free man, intent on pursuing his own meaning even if there is none. Or thus he always thought of himself before he forsook his rambling to try his hand here at the sheriff’s life, and though he cannot think now why he did so, he believes it may have had to do with the oppression of loneliness which often attaches itself to freedom like a sickening and also with the presence here of the village schoolmarm, who is a mystery to him and a provocation, as she is to the men huddled around the kerosene lamp, judging by their lurid fantasies about her, now at the center of their conversation. Perhaps, too, it had to do with vanity, a desire for the esteem of others less ephemeral than that won in passing encounters with a gun or his fists. Well, he should be who he is, what trouble he’s in he’s brought on himself by not being so; when he’s got through this misery he should, forgetful as he is, remember that and live by it as best he can, or at least such is his resolution, tied up and stinking there in the horse trough. Sorting it all out has cleared his head somewhat, which, he thinks, is probably why they thought up stag parties in the first place.

There are a couple of horses down at the far end; he can hear them snorting softly and pawing around. Though he is still crammed into Belle’s skin-tight bloomers, he is also wearing his boots and silver spurs, which, through hard use, his or somebody’s, have been worn to knifelike circles of steel, and it occurs to him he might be able to cut his bonds with them, borrow one of those horses, and ride out of here, if he can just get his good leg under him in the feeding trough. This is not easy, the bad leg mostly getting in the way, and consequently there’s a lot of bumping and banging of steel, bone, and wood, but the men are too drunk and talking too loud about the marm to take much notice. Getting his leg under him is not the only problem. Once it’s there, he recognizes, almost immediately, that it is easier to cut his butt than the ropes. Slowly, though, as he saws back and forth on the spur, he can feel them beginning to fray.

Whut really gits me, says one of the men, is her eyes. Blue and liquid as a violet’s in the dewy morn, y’know whut I mean? And oh shit, her hair. It’s like sunbeams twisted inta wavin golden curls, the gold I aint never struck out here. I’d like t’fuck thet hair.

Whuddayu talkin about, yu ole galoot? She aint a blonde. And her eyes aint blue, they’re more like a kinder gray, the color a rain, pale’n clear like yu kin see clean through em. I’d like t’fuck them eyes.

They’re whutever fuckin color I want em to be, yu wet bag a ratshit. Shet yer lip fore I dissect yer innards and make sausages outa em fer my dawg’s breakfast.

Yu’n whut other regimunt, buttwipe?

Hole on, fellers, yu’re both wrong, says another; they’re green. He continues to saw at the ropes binding his wrists, his attention narrowed now to this single task, but they seem almost to be growing back where he’s cut them, only thicker, as if accumulating scar tissue. Her eyes is green like a medder in springtime with flecks a wildflower colors in em and bright like they’s a light inside shinin out, the two of em set in a face whose pale complexion is a most genteel and suptile blend a the lily’n the rose, ifn yu ever seen sech things. And right square in the middle of it all, a perky little nose stickin straight out at yu so delicate and esposed as t’make yer heart weep fer the innercent purity of the sweet angel whut sports it. I’d like t’fuck thet nose.

Course she aint sweet alla time.

No, yu’re right thar, her disposition aint always the easiest t’git on with.

Mosta the time, in fact, sweet aint the word at all.

And ifn it aint the word, mister, yu better go fer cover, cuz fore yu know it she’ll unleash her upbringin on yu.

The marm is a formidable unleasher of upbringins.

Yu aint jest talkin jackshit, podnuh. Wunst I said aint in fronta her and she got me down and warshed my mouth out with lye soap. Thought I’d die a the foamin wet rot.

She whupped my arse with a yardstick fer near a hour wunst’n all I done wuz t’fuckin split a danged infinnytif.

Whut’s a infinnytif?

Durned ifn I know, but round the marm I shore aint lettin on.

He can feel the rope suddenly giving way at last, just a few strands left uncut, but he has to pause when one of the revelers comes lumbering back into the dark to piss in the trough. It’s the bald-headed preacher with the eye stitched through with a scar. His collar is turned the right way around now, but everything else is on backwards, causing him difficulties at the trough. He’s staggering drunk, doesn’t even seem to see him there. I’d like t’split her infinnytif, he bellows out, letting go above his belt and splattering just about everything except the trough.

Keerful, podnuh, someone calls out from the circle around the lamp. Yu’re crossin inta perilous country.

Naw, I mean it, growls the parson, heading back, still dribbling down his leg, to join the others. Some of the rope strands seem to have grown back as tough as tendons and to be feeding on the blood leaking from his sliced behind. There’s no time to lose. Yu wanta know the truth, I’d like t’rassle her down and fuck the bejesus outa her smartass ass.

Whoa, yu’re talkin bout the schoolmarm, revrend! Yu’re talkin about sumbody pure as the lily a the lake, sumbody as spotless and innercent as a angel in heaven!

But aint thet the more consarned reason? I mean, we’re out here in the goddam Terrortory, boys, whut’s lilies a the lake got t’do with it? Fuck it! I say we go fer her!

Them’s mighty brave words, podnuh. I got dibs on seconds. Who’s goin first?

There’s a prevailing silence around the kerosene lamp, broken finally by a low stuttering fart. Yu volunteerin or whut? someone asks. Nope, nope! Thet one jest slipped out. As do his wrists, the tenacious snarl of bonds defeated at last. He unbuckles the belt, crawls out of the feeding trough, now swarming with writhing rope ends, and, hobbling on his bad leg, makes his way cautiously over to where the horses are. Well, someone says, it’s the sheriff’s fuckin party, lets use him t’break the marm in.

Aint we already done thet?

Not as I kin recollect, pard.

But didnt we—?

Yu callin me a liar?

No, no! Yu’re right, I dont recollect neither. Let’s git him.

This proposal meets with universal approval, expressed in meaty grunts, so he knows he has to keep moving, though moving’s just what’s most hard to do. He feels like he’s wallowing agonizingly through thick mud just to cross the stable, and climbing up on the first horse he comes to is beyond his present abilities. Hey! Whar is he? he hears someone shout. He’s gone! Whut —? A terrible weariness overtakes him and he fears all his heroics may have been for nothing, but the prospect of having to rape the schoolmarm and marry the chanteuse spurs him on, and, sucking air through his mouth, he silently eases the animal out of its stall. Thar he is! Over by the hosses! With the last of his strength he heaves himself headfirst over the horse’s back and, whacking its rump with his hat and gunbelt and screaming like he’s lost his reason, he sends it galloping madly out of the stable and into the desert night.

At midday, he’s still limply rag-dolled over the horse, his shredded butt baking in the sun and feasted on by flies. Hurts too much to move it. Hurts all over. His ribs are now as sore as the rest of him after the long frantic gallop out of town, and his back feels like it’s broken. But at least he’s gone from that place. For good, he hopes. About the long night, he remembers little after the shouts and gunfire. Instead, he recalls another night on the desert, long ago, when he was still adrift and in the saddle and had not yet reached the town, which was then nothing more than a teasing irregularity on the daytime horizon. He’d been moseying along for some time and had grown accustomed to the bleak austerity of that horizon and of the empty desert he was crossing, but on this particular night it seemed even more devoid of living feature than usual. Not a single cactus, no Joshua trees, sagebrush, or even scrub. No tum-bleweeds. No water. Just rock and sand, as far as he could see, a vast dead thing spread out all about him beneath the alien immensity of the star-scattered sky, that lifeless beyond beyond this lifeless beyond, where, with what he has of a life, he’d come to. A desolate silence lay upon the stony plain as though compressed and baled and weightily stacked upon it, not so much as a whisper of a wind, nothing but the hollow clocklike clopping of his mustang’s hoofs, he and the horse the only things in all this emptiness that moved.