Robert Coover - A Night at the Movies Or, You Must Remember This

"Go play cops and bandidos, Sheriff," said Belle like ice.

Hank gazed greedily on her rising and falling breasts, on her soft white belly, and the pretty wad of fur where her fingers were burrowing. Then he noticed the open window. Distantly, he heard obscene laughter. A faint odor still: the Mexican's trademark. "Belle — !" He was aghast.

"That dirty rotten Mex!" Belle sobbed suddenly and pitched over on the sheets, burying her face in the pillows, her body convulsive with weeping. The sheets where she'd been lying were one goddamn mess.

The muscles around Sheriff Harmon's mouth tightened, his eyes narrowed. He gazed one last time on Belle's bloody rear, then turned and ran out of the room, down the stairs, and on out of the Gentry's Junction Hotel.

(Don Pedo the Mexican bandit he is famoso for many talents, but none has attracted more notices than that for which his dear mama bruja named him. No importance the occasion, the Mexican he is prepared. In that illimitable orb he maintains an infinite variety of ultimate commentaries upon any subject. Sweet or acrid, silent or with thunders, scientific or metaphysical, the Mexican touches an inner resort and the correct especies she emerges in all her ambrosian glory. His bowels intricately reply wrath with wrath, love with love, but always with a spice of obscene humor. It is never entirely satisfactory, and yet nothing is ever more satisfactory. Ay de mí! Such are our happy perplexities, no? Well, come then, Don Pedo! That we may be friends! If it must be foul, let it be sweetly foul!)

The Sheriff pulled up at a slow bitter lope in front of Flem's general store. It was noon and the zenith sun was blistering hot. The roan dripped sweat and frothed at the mouth. Harmon swung off, tied up the animal, clumped up the steps and into the store. Flem was alone.

"Flem, I'm meetin' the Mex in ten minutes. Gentry and Slough are on the way over. District Judge and the Marshal are due in on the stagecoach." Together they could do it. Damn it, they had to! "Is it here yet?"

Flem looked up at Sheriff Harmon over a pair of rimless spectacles. He was chewing lazily on a wad of tobacco. He turned and sent a thick yellow oyster into the brass spittoon some feet away. "Nope," he drawled, "it ain't."

There was an awkward pause. Hank was troubled by Gentry's and Slough's absence. "Listen, Flem, you got some rope?"

Flem sighed, aimed another gob at the spittoon. He peered slowly around the store. "Yep, reckon I got a piece." He sat on an old three-legged stool, poking his glasses up higher on the sloping bridge of his nose from time to time with a crooked yellow finger. "Gonna tie up the Mex, are ye?"

"That's right. We're gonna tie up the Mex, Flem."

"Well," drawled the old storekeeper, and turned his eye on the spittoon again. "Well."

"Now listen, Flem. You know damned well if we don't get that Mex once and for all, this town is finished. And if this town is finished, you're finished."

"Yep. Well. That's prob'ly so." Flem arched his white eyebrows, gazed wearily up at the Sheriff over his spectacles, then turned and shot some more juice spittoonward. "It ain't I don't appreciate what you're doin', Hank. The law's a good thing." He sighed, rubbed his old grizzled jaw. "Yep. It's a good thing."

Hank's fury was mounting again. But before he could come back at Flem, the door opened. Sheriff Harmon spun, the gun already in his hand. It was Slough. "I'm here, Henry. It's wrong. It's a sin against the cloth. Against the Almighty Himself. But I'm here."

Hank sighed, holstered his gun. "I'm glad you come, Rev'rend. Now all we're lackin' is Gentry and the stage." He stamped over to the door, spurs ringing, looked out. Street was empty. No, wait! There he was, creeping furtively along the edges of the buildings. That cowardly sonuvabitch. Hank turned back to the others. "Gentry's comin'." Things would work out now.

"Now listen a minnit, Hank," said the old storekeeper, shifting warily on the stool. "Ye kin have all the rope ye want. Anything else in the store ye want, too. Understand? And mebbe I'll even kinder cover you like with my old Winchester, from here inside. Mebbe, I say." He spat. "But, Sheriff, I ain't goin' out there in the street. I ain't gittin' off this stool, Hank. I'm an old man and I ain't gittin' off this stool."

Gentry had slipped quietly in through the side door. He was white as a sun-baked dog turd and all atremble. Sheriff Harmon stared as though stupefied at the three of them, at the old storekeeper, the preacher, and the doddering banker. He grunted. Maybe he ought to just get on his horse and ride out of here. If he had any place to go. He thought of Belle. "Okay," he said quietly. "Okay. We'll let easy do it. I'll meet the Mex alone and disarm him." They seemed to relax a bit at this, but no one looked at him. "You chickenshits got nothin' t' worry about. Nothin'. All I want you t' do is when I got the Mex licked, I want you t' come out together, bring some rope, and show all the other yella-bellies of this goddamn town how the cards lie. That's all. Got it?"

The three of them nodded glumly. None of them spoke. Finally, Flem said in his soft easy drawl, "I wish the stage'd come in. Bring the Judge and the Marshal. I'd feel better about it."

(Don Pedo the grand terrible Mexican he is raising up the bandanna on his fat nose, concealing his gold-tooth smile. He gives a spur to the flank of his decrepit pinto and wobbles down into the path of the speeding stagecoach. The driver, growing white, pulls hard on the reins. The dust makes clouds in the dry air, while the stagecoach with abandon she skids to a halt. Bang! Bang bang! pop the guns of the Mexican. Just for fun. Hee hee hee! The horses they rear like goats and whinny in sweaty excitation. "Ain't c-c-carryin' m-much, Don Puh-Puh-Pedo, suh!" exclaims the driver making water in his pantalones. "J-jist this!" And the stagecoach driver magnanimously (ah, this is indeed a land of magnanimity!) he extracts a box from under his seat and throws it down to Pedo. The little bandido catches the strongbox with the agility that always amazes and into one of his fat saddlebags it goes like from the arts of magic. "Eh, amigo! Who you got in dere?" he laughs, indicating a fat brown finger to the coach. "You bring Pedo calentitas fresquitas from beeg city, I think?" The driver is commencing to laugh helplessly through pressed-together teeth. "They's a — - hee hee! — — Judge, Pedo, and the Marshal and summa his — - hoo hah! wheeze! — — kin!" The Mexican he fires one shot into the air. "Hey! Allabody out! You wanna die like peegs! Ŕndale!" Two men, a woman, and a young girl creep like mouses from the coach. The happy Mexican he takes down his bandanna and he smiles his smile of thick lips and gold teeth. Ay! It is ever a thing to see! One of the men he is fat like a pear with a big black hat and curls of white hair on top and soft lips that tremble. Without explanation he too must commence to weep and laugh through his nose at the smile of Don Pedo the Mexican. The other man, the Marshal it must be, is tall and erect, unmoving, with eyes of smoked glass. Eh, mierda, the Mexican he disdains to not look at this bad milk. He observes rather and of course the woman and the little girl. The seńora of the Marshal she is noble and grandly bosomed with long much-speaking lashes. The child is a tender thing, and she holds to her mama with fear and temblores. The famous belly of Don Pedo he vibrates and bright gleams his mouth of golden teeth. There is a sound like of tent stakes being placed and in the air a remembering of circuses. Shyly then she smiles the little one up at the friendly Mexican. Ah! the childrens, how they all love Don — - The hand of the Marshal she flicks toward the holster. The Mexican is firing and the hand of the Marshal she is ripping away — - spluf! — — at the wrist. The driver and the pear — - or, one wishes to say, the Judge — - cannot it would seem stop laughing like tontos. Perhaps it is the look on the face of the Marshal that is so comic. It is as like he has lost something but he knows not still what. The Mexican now provides certain instructions, and in consequence, the Marshal he sits himself in blind estupor on the road behind the coach, while the Judge ties his feet with a rope to the behind — - how you say? ax-le, no? sí — - to the behind ax-le. Then the Judge he himself attaches in the same manner, tee-hee-hee-ing all the time like a plump imbécil bird. "Tu, la primera," smiles Don Pedo the adored to the timid chiquita. He displays with a glory that cannot be denied his luminous golden teeth. "You good one only time." Ay, Pedo! A man of genius! A man of arts! A man of quantity and resolution! The driver and the Judge they possess tears in their eyes from such dolorous laughter. Finally, to the deception of all the world, the Mexican he uprises and draws on his pantalones, though as always he forgets them to button. "Hey! Giddap!" he shouts, and the driver in a laughing terror cracks the whip over the unquiet horses. The stagecoach she is launching herself off like a lighted-up puppy into the distance, snapping the Judge and the Marshal behind like a forked tail of the devil. The warm-blooded Mexican lover he uplifts now with jubilation the grandly bosomed Seńora the Marshal upon his escabrous pinto, smiling with the Mexican hospitality that it is his custom. His breath is perhaps not pure, but the blushing lady she seems not to notice. She has twice the grandness of little Pedo, but for that the globous bandit he smiles the more proudly. The pinto is clapping wearily under his magnificent cargo up into the inviting hills. The limp little girl on the road, alas, too delicate after all, she cannot see them go.)