Robert Coover - Ghost Town

Saw , she replies sharply, spitting the gag away, and she slaps him. A real cracker that makes his teeth rattle. Then she mounts his horse sidesaddle and leaves him there, alone on the empty desert, without another word. He rubs his cheek, watching her as she quickly diminishes and then vanishes over the horizon. Never could understand women.

His face is still stinging from the schoolmarm’s slap when the town rolls up under his feet again and the saloon chanteuse leans out of an upstairs window to holler down: Whuddayu doin back here, stranger? I thought yu’d skedaddled. Yer mug’s up all over town!

Reckon I jest caint stay away, he says drily. It’s true, he sees his face on WANTED posters nailed up everywhere, though the one hung on the jailhouse hitching rail over by the old buckboard is more like a rear view of his desperate escape from the stables: HOSS THIEF! it says. REEWARD! DAID OR KICKIN! Except for the orange-haired chanteuse framed by her lace-curtained window, there is no sign of life in the dusty town, nor even a hot wind to stir the gallows ropes or rock the saloon signs. It is empty and silent, yet everything seems tautly edged in the shadowless light of high noon as if the whole town were mined with dynamite. He’s in no shape to draw on anybody, but his hands are tensed over his gunbelt out of an old gunfighter’s habit, which is the only habit he respects. Whar is everbody? he asks.

Dunno. Probly out lookin fer yu, badman. Guess thet wuz some damn stag party. I must say yu do look mighty appealin, standin out thar in the street with yer weepon stickin out like yu wuz aimin t’ambush us all. Mebbe I should oughter come down thar’n hang my wet pussy on it a spell, jest so’s it dont git dried out in the sun.

Well I wuz wonderin ifn mebbe yu still had my britches sumwhars.

I think I seen em about. Stay whar yu are, honey. I’ll hunt fer em’n brang em down.

Staying where he is, there in the middle of his own portrait gallery, makes no practical sense, and he anticipates Belle might have notions about that reward money or else further marital designs, but in a wide-open ramshackle town like this, made out of a few boards and a bit of tin, it’s not easy to find a place to hole out in unnoticed. What he settles on finally is his own jailhouse, where he might best defend himself until everything gets explained. So he limps heavily over there, dragging his bad leg behind him like a laden travois, and finds them all inside waiting for him. They kick his feet out from under him, strip him of his weapons, and give him a thorough hiding with their fists and boots, gun butts and wooden legs.

We’da hung yu straight off, yu dodrabbid no-good thievin varmint, but on accounta yu wuz wunst a lawman, yu’ll git a trial, fair’n square, and then we’ll hang yu.

Dont do me no favors, he groans, and rolls over to hug his pain, and they kick him some more. He feels like he’s breathing directly through a cold painful hole in his chest, and he notices then that he’s no longer wearing his badge. Must have fallen off back in the stables. Or maybe before. Can’t remember when last he saw it.

They drag him by his feet to a cell and heave him in, but there’s another person in there. Looks to have been dead for three or four weeks. When he points this out to them, a bespectacled old humpback, who might once have been his deputy, one of them anyway, kicks at the body and says: Musta been a malfeasant some other sheriff roped. Fergot t’feed him, I reckon. They pick up the corpse and throw it out into the street and then they lock him up in there and hang the key on the far wall, which is otherwise covered with the photographs of dead people, everything from hollow-eyed babies to bullet-ridden bandits and heaped-up massacre victims.

The present deputy, a tall ugly man with long greasy hair like knotted iron rope and a random scattering of gold teeth, settles into a creaky swivel chair with a pipe and bottle and deck of cards while the other men clamber out into the darkness, headed for the saloon and arguing about how the reward money is to be divvied up. What he regrets now, curled up there on the cell floor, is that he didn’t hop that train when it roared through. Wasn’t thinking. Not about that. What a woman will do to you. Not that it would have made much difference. One night after a saloon bust-up, he recalls, he got thrown into jail with a famous trainrobber due to hang at dawn. In the town whar I growed up, the trainrobber told him, they wuz all this fuckin storifyin. Yu couldnt hardly git clear of it. I wuz afeerd I’d hafta spend my whole goddam life insida cock’n bull cooked up by other people. Mostly dead people. So thet’s why I come out here. Yarn my own dyin, as yu might say. Well pears like yu done it, he said, for he was young and wild then and he admired the man. The trainrobber, however, stared at him like he was the village idiot. Like fuckin hell, he said.

He’s still there on the floor and growing used to it when the saloon chanteuse turns up with a clay crock full of baked beans. Aint he a purty mess, she says, looking in on him. Them duds is plain revoltin. Take em off him, deppity, I’ll warsh em up fer his hangin exhibit.

I aint touchin them filthy bloomers, Belle.

Yu dont hafta. Jest git me his hat and boots and thet buckskin shirt.

The deputy scratches his armpits thoughtfully, then hollers at him: Shuck them duds, yu jasper, and throw em out here fore I shoot yer fuckin ass off!

Go t’hell, he mutters, and the deputy lets off a shot that burns his ear. Probably put a hole in it.

Keerful, deppity. Yu’ll spoil him fer the hangin. Open up, I’ll git them things off him.

Yu wouldnt be pullin nuthin funny, would yu, Belle?

I’d like t’pull his funny little nuthin out by the ruts, deppity, ifn thet’s whut yu mean. This here’s the two-timin dog whut left me standin at the altar — yu wuz thar, yu seen it. Hell, I caint wait t’see the shifty sumbitch swing. Now open up’n lemme at him.

Humph. Awright, he says. He can hear the key clanking in the lock. But I’m keepin my gun on yu alla same.

Well jest dont open up no new holes, I caint find enuf hard men in this town t’service the ones I got. She sets the dish of beans on the floor and kneels down beside him, flashing her naked under-parts at him. I brung yu sumthin t’eat, honey, she says suggestively, and the thing between her legs seems to blow him a wet kiss. He turns his head away. Yes, there has definitely been some damage done to that ear. The chanteuse straddles his legs to work his boots off and massages herself on the hairy parts there, then unbuckles his gunbelt and pulls his shirt off over his head. Yu’re really up agin it, hero, she whispers, breathing heavily. Yu got more troubles than a rat-tailed hoss tied short in flytime.

I’m glad t’hear it. I wuz afeerd everthin wuz gonna be awright.

Whuddayu sayin t’him, Belle?

I tole him he wuz a rat fer stealin thet hoss and he’d be flyin high in short time. Now yu jest dig inta them beans, short-timer, and wait here till I brang these things back t’yu.

I aint goin nowhars.

Yu bet yer ass yu aint, says the deputy, locking up again. The chanteuse, he sees, has her free hand in the deputy’s pants.

Yu’re near as ugly down thar, deppity, as yu are up top, she says.

I know it. Yu hankerin fer a poke, Belle?

Aint I always, she moans, nuzzling in under his spidery hair to chew on a thick lump of scar tissue that was probably once part of an ear. Yu go on playin with thet piece a gristle, deppity, and keep it lively till I git back with the kid’s duds.

She seems to go out the door and come right back in again, though it’s not like that, he knows, because meanwhile he’s found the hacksaw in the pot of beans and has been removing the window bars while his keeper’s had his back turned, sucking from his whiskey bottle and playing solitaire by lamplight. The bars, he’s discovered, are just old wooden fenceposts tarred black; he could have punched them out.