Robert Coover - Ghost Town

Suddenly the figures reappear in the streets below, scampering, rolling, and falling about as before, scribbling their miserable fates on the town’s dusty tablet, and a moment later the stutter of pops resumes, tattooing the desert air. He is not certain how he will manage what he has to do, but the simplest and boldest thing would be just to ride down there, pick her up, put her on his horse, and ride away, and he supposes it’s what he’ll do, or try to do. If she’ll allow him. There’s a fierce principled streak in her that can get in the way of amiable intentions. He envisions the struggle, and his lips twitch involuntarily into a half smile. Whut’s she got that I aint got twice of? asks the chanteuse flatly, her voice hardening.

He presses his lips together, feeling like someone’s just peeked at his hand in a poker showdown. It aint thet. The little figures below withdraw and the streets are cleared and the buildings slide about once more as though trying to solve some puzzle. It’s jest she aint no hoss thief, and I caint let her die fer thet.

Hmmph, says Belle in the silence that returns. Her tasseled sombrero has been tipped back onto her shoulders and her orange hair is blazing in the sun like her whole head’s on fire. Thet harpy is homely as a fencepost and friendly as a dead cat and she aint even bowlaigged enuf t’set a hoss proper. Ifn it wuz me they wuz hangin, yu’da been long gone, wouldnt yu, handsome?

She’s differnt, Belle. He remembers her as he first saw her, framed in the schoolhouse window, her dark hair coiled into a tight bun, so very pale and beautiful and staring out at him as if to instruct him by gaze alone on the ways of the universe and the means for quelling the spirits of evil in the human heart. She’s kindly and reefined and pure as a angel. She caint think a wicked thought.

Damn her eyes. She’s a prissy bitch with a cob stuck purely up her reefined angel ass. I caint stand the proud uppish way she talks, struttin her book larnin. Whut’s sumbody like her doin out here anyhow? The chanteuse pauses to collect her breath, which is coming in short furious gasps. There is a look on her face that reminds him of his mustang just before he shot him. Well jest dont yu fergit, cowboy. Yu made a promise.

He sighs. This is not turning out as he’d imagined it. He’d even thought that Belle might help him. Aint no witnesses t’thet promise, Belle.

No? How many folks yu reckon is down thar?

They are dashing about through the streets again in their hats and batwing chaps, shooting at each other, diving for cover, appearing on the tops of things only to fall off them, the buzzards as usual hovering shaggily above like bald black-jacketed croupiers, surveying the action, waiting to gather in the winnings. The thin puppety-pop code of distant gunfire rises as the agitation diminishes and the streets empty out, and then it dies, too. I dunno, he says, as the little buildings rearrange themselves around the gallows again. A goodly number, I spose. They dont stand still long enuf t’count.

Well however many, sweetiepie, thet’s how many witnesses I got.

The streets of the town below are empty and silent as before and hotly burnished by the noonday sun. Into them on a coal-black horse now rides a lone figure all outfitted in black with silver spurs and six-shooters and a gold ring in one ear. It is he. A man on a mission. The chanteuse has left him in anger and disgust, or seems to have done, nothing he could do about that, and here he is. From under the broad brim of his slouch hat he warily watches, feeling watched, the windows and rooftops, the corners of things. Expecting trouble. The mare seems edgy too, rolling her head fretfully, biting at the bit. Well, she’s an outlaw horse, has likely never set hoof in this town before except on illegal business; she probably has good reason for unease.

In the center of town across from the saloon, a potbellied mestizo with a missing ear and a tall squint-eyed man with droopy handlebars and a bald head tattooed with hair are testing the trapdoor of the gallows, using a noosed goat, not by the appearance of it for the first time. Yo, sheriff! the man with the tattooed hair calls out, dragging the goat into position. Howzit hangin?

He nods at them and watches the limp goggle-eyed goat drop, then walks the mare cautiously over to the jailhouse. So he’s the sheriff again. Yes, he’s wearing his silver badge once more, the one with the hole in it. That explains the sharp tug in the breast he’s felt since turning his back on the inviting horizon and riding back to town again. Shines out on his black shirt in a way it never did before.

There’s a poster outside the jailhouse door announcing the high noon hanging on the morrow, with a portrait of the schoolmarm staring sternly out at all who would dare stare back. He is shaken by the intensity of her gaze, and the pure gentle innocence of it, and the rectitude, and he knows he is lost to it.

He hitches the mare to the rail there, and though she is skittish and backs away, her eyes rolling, tugging at her tether, he needs her for what he must next do. He unhooks his rifle from the saddle horn. I’ll jest be a minnit and then we’ll hightail it outa here, he says softly, stroking her sweaty neck to calm her, and he enters the jailhouse ready for whatever happens.

But the jailhouse is empty, nobody in there except an old codger with an eyepatch, slumped in the wooden swivel chair, wearing a deputy’s badge on his raggedy red undershirt. There is a thick gully of scar running through his gray beard, down which a trickle of tobacco juice dribbles, and his lone eye is red with drink. Hlo, sheriff, he drawls, trying to stand. Glad yu’re back. Yu’re jest in time t’hang thet rapscallious hoss thief yerself. He chortles, then falls back into the swivel chair, takes a swig from a whiskey bottle, belches, offers it out. Yer health, sheriff!

Whar is she? he says.

The prizner? They tuck her over t’the saloon t’shuck her weeds offn her’n scrub her down afore her hangin.

The saloon?

Yup, well they got soap’n water over thar and plentya hep in spiffyin her up. The boys wuz plannin t’rub her down good with goose grease’n skunk oil after, polish her up right properlike. He’s already at the door and there’s a pounding in his temples that’s worse than snakebite. Hey, hole up, sheriff! Ain’t thet a outlaw hoss out thar?

Mebbe. I’ll check into it. Yu stay here’n keep yer workin eye on thet whuskey bottle.

I aim to.

The mare is wild-eyed and frothing, rearing against her hitching rope, so he lets her go. Stay outa sight, he whispers to her as he unties her. This wont take long. I’ll whistle yu when we’re set t’bust out. The horse hesitates, pawing the ground, whinnying softly, but he slaps her haunches affectionately, and, glancing back over her shoulder at him, she slips away into the shadows behind the jailhouse.

The object of his quest is not in the saloon either. It’s quiet in there, four men playing cards, a couple more at the bar, a puddle of water in the middle of the floor where a bucket of soapy water stands, a lacy black thing ripped up and hung over its lip. The men at the bar are laughing and pointing at the bucket or else at the wet long-handled grooming brush beside it. Thet goddam humpback! one of them says, hooting.

Hlo, sheriff, grins the bartender, a dark sleepy-eyed man of mixed breed with half a nose. Welcum back. Whut’s yer pizen?

An argument breaks out at the card table, the air fills with the slither of steel flashing free of leather, shots ring out, and a tall skinny man with spidery hair loses most of his jaw and all else besides, slamming against the wall with the impact before sliding in a bloody heap to the floor. Looks like they’s a chair open fer yu, sheriff, says the thin little bespectacled man who shot him, tucking his smoking derringer back inside his black broadcloth coat. Set yer butt down and study the devil’s prayerbook a spell.