Robert Coover - Ghost Town

I aint a sportin man. Whut’s happened t’the prizner?

Yu mean thet dastardly hoss thief? Haw. Caint say. He aims a brown slather of juice at a brass spittoon, and it crashes there, making the spittoon rattle on its round bottom like a gambling top. She might could be over t’doc’s fer a purjin so’s t’git her cleaned up inside as smart as out, though after her warshin in here, I misdoubt she needs it.

The others snort and hoot at this. Naw, I think doc musta awready seed her, declares the barkeep, a toothpick stabbed into a gap between his tobacco-stained teeth. He was in here shortly sniffin his finger.

Probly then, laughs another, they tuck her up t’the schoolhouse fer a paddlin.

Whut’s thet got t’do with bein a hoss thief?

Nuthin. It’s jest fer fun. Give the jade summa her own back. And they all whoop again and slap the bar and table.

He pushes out through the swinging doors, his blood pounding in his ears and eyes. Can’t recollect where the doctor lives, if he ever knew, so he heads for the schoolhouse. On his way over, he hears a banging noise coming from a workshop back of the feed store. It’s a lanky hairy-faced carpenter knocking out a pine coffin. Howdy, sheriff, he says, lifting the coffin up on its foot. Jest gittin ready t’eut the lid. Inside, on the bottom, there is a crude line drawing of a stretched-out human figure, no doubt done by tracing around a person lying there. One of the faces from the hanging posters has been cut out and pasted in the outline of the head, and nails have been driven in where the nipples would be. The arms go only to the elbows (probably her hands were folded between the nails), but the legs are there in all their forked entirety. I reckon it should oughter fit her perfect. Whuddayu think?

I think yu should oughter burn it.

The schoolhouse is not where he remembered it either. Instead, he comes on a general dry goods and hardware store in that proximate neighborhood and he stops in to ask if she’s been seen about.

Sheriff! Whar yu been? cries the merchant, a round bandy-legged fellow with a black toupee and his nose pushed into his red face. They’s been a reglar plague a hell-raisin bandits pilin through here since yu been gone! Jest lookit whut they done t’my store! Shot up my winders, killt my staff, stole summa my finest goods, ‘n splattered blood’n hossshit on all the rest! Yu gotta do sumthin about this! Whut’s a sheriff fer ifn honest folk caint git pertection!

Thet’s a question I aint got a clear answer to, he says, staring coldly into the fat merchant’s beady eyes. Right now I’m tryin t’locate a missin prizner.

Whut, yu mean thet ornery no-account barebutt picaroon? She aint missin. Yer boys wuz by here a time ago with her, plain cleaned me outa hosswhips’n ax handles; she wuz in fer a grand time. I think they wuz makin fer the stables. Yu know. Scene a the crime. He turns to leave, but the merchant has a grip on his elbow and a salacious grin on his round red face. I gotta tell yu, sheriff, I seen sumthin when they brung her by I aint never seed before. He glances over his shoulder with one eye, the other winking, and leans toward him, his cold fermented breath ripe with the stink of rot and mildew. She wuz — huh! yu know, he snickers softly in his ear. She wuz cryin!

He tears free from the merchant’s greasy grip and strides out the door onto the wooden porch, his spurs ringing in the midday hush. He pauses there to stare out upon the dusty town. No sign of them. They could be anywhere. There’s a dim shadowy movement over in the blacksmith’s shed, but that’s probably his horse pacing about. He should just go back to the jailhouse and wait for them. But then the white church steeple beckons him. She gave him a Bible once, he recalls. They’ll have to take her there sooner or later if she wants to go, and she surely will. There’s probably a law about it.

He is met inside the church doors by the parson, or a parson, standing in a black frock coat behind a wooden table with a Bible on it, a pair of ivory dice (REPENT, says a tented card beside them, AFORE YU CRAP OUT!), a pistol, and a collection plate. Howdo, sheriff, he says, touching the brim of his stovepipe hat. He’s a tall ugly gold-toothed man with wild greasy hair snaking about under the hat and a drunkard’s lumpy nose, on the end of which a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles is perched like two pans of a gold-dust balance. Welcum t’the house a the awmighty. Yu’re jest in time fer evenin prayers!

I aint here fer prayin. I’m lookin fer a missin prizner.

Y’mean thet jezebel hoss thief? She gone missin? A leather flap behind the parson blocks his view, but he can hear the churchgoers carrying on inside, hooting and hollering in the pietistical way. Well she’s probly in thar, ever other sinner is.

Thanks, revrend, he says, and heads on in, but the parson grabs him by the elbow. The pistol is cocked and pointed at his ear. Whoa thar, brother. I caint let yu go in without payin.

I tole yu, I aint here fer the preachin, I’m on sheriffin bizness.

Dont matter. Yu gotta put sumthin in the collection plate or I caint let yu by.

I aint got no money, he says firmly, staring down the gun barrel. And I’m goin in thar.

Dont hafta be money, says the parson, keeping the pistol pointed at his head but letting go of his elbow to tug at his reversed collar so as to give his Adam’s apple more room to bob. Them sporty boots’ll do.

No. Gonna need them boots. If he just walked on in, would the preacher shoot him in the back? He might.

Well how about thet thar beaded black-haired scalp then?

He hesitates. He doesn’t know why he wears it. For good luck, maybe. Like a rabbit’s paw. But he’s not superstitious. And it doesn’t even smell all that good. Awright, he says, and he cuts it off his gunbelt with his bowie knife and tosses it in the collection plate, where it twists and writhes for a moment before curling up like a dead beetle.

Now I’ll roll yu fer them boots, ifn yu’re of a mind fer it, grins the parson goldenly, picking up the dice and rattling them about in his grimy knob-knuckled hand, but he pushes on past him under the flap into the little one-room church, the preacher calling out behind him: I’m sorely beseechin the good Lawd thet yu localize thet snotnose gallows bird, sheriff! Dont wanta lose her at the last minnit and set all hell t’grievin!

Veiled gas lamps hang from blackened beams in the plank-walled room, the air hazy with smoke and smelling of stale unwashed bodies and the nauseous vapors of the rotgut whiskey — drunk, undrunk, and regurgitated — being served like communion from boards set on pew backs. Hanging in the thick smoke like audible baubles are the ritual sounds of ringing spittoons, dice raining upon craps tables, the clink of money, soft slap of cards, the ratcheting and ping of fortune wheels and slot machines, the click click click of the roulette ball, and, amid the zealous cries of the high rollers, oaths are being sworn and glasses smashed and pistols fired off with a kind of emotional abandon. Are yu all down, gentamin? someone hollers, and another cries out: Gawd-awmighty, smack me easy! Somewhere in the church, behind all the smoke and noise, he can hear the saloon chanteuse singing about a magical hero with a three-foot johnnie, now hung and gone to glory, her voice half smothered by the thick atmosphere. Sweat-stained hats hang in parade on hooks along the walls under doctrinal pronouncements regarding spitting and fair dealing, rows of decapitated animal heads, dusty silvered mirrors which reflect nothing, and religious paintings of dead bandits and unclothed ladies in worshipful positions, but the only sign anywhere of the one he’s looking for is one of the posters announcing tomorrow’s hanging nailed up over a faro table, the portrait obscenely altered. BUCK THE TIGER! it says, and a crude drawing shows where and how to do so.