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

The stagecoach arrived grotesquely at 12:05. Sheriff Harmon left Slough and Gentry vomiting miserably, foolishly, at the sight and strode in a rage toward the town saloon. He batted through the swinging doors. Empty. He peered over the bar. No one. Not even the goddamn bartender. He slapped the doors open again and stepped out onto the one main street. It stretched off east and west toward the distant horizon, a hot unbroken line. The street was banked here by ramshackle frame buildings, mostly false storefronts, their windows all shrouded. Seemed to be telling Hank something. The futility of it all maybe. He sighed. He was alone. Alone with the Mexican. But: where was the Mexican?

The Sheriff of Gentry's Junction, tall, lean, proud, his cold blue eyes squinting into the glare of the noon sun, walked silently, utterly alone, down the dusty Main Street, the jingle of his spurs muffled only slightly by the puffs of dust kicked up by his high heels. Sun straight overhead. He hauled out his pocket watch. Just a couple of minutes now to 12:10. It was on. Like it or not. He slid the watch back into his pocket as though dropping anchor. He felt his right hand sweat and itch.

A foul insulting odor reached his nostrils. He spun, hands at the ready. Pedo the notorious Mexican bandit sat on an old overturned bucket about ten feet back of him in the middle of the dusty street, idly picking his teeth with a splinter of wood. He was smiling broadly around the splinter, that fat-lipped sonuvabitch, and his gold teeth gleamed blindingly in the midday sun. Hank returned icily the Mexican's hot gaze. The stinking little runt. Now that he had him here, he wasn't scared of him. With cool measured steps, aware of the multitude of hidden eyes on him, the Sheriff approached the Mexican. The Mex had something in his hands. Something that shone in the sun. Knife? Gun? A watch! The Mex was grinning and holding up a gold goddamn pocket watch! Henry recognized it. It was his own. Warily, the Sheriff accepted it. He looked: 12:09. Too soon, but to hell with it, he couldn't hold himself back. He reached down toward the Mexican to disarm him. Everything seemed wrong, but he reached down. Felt like he was reaching down into death. The goddamn Mex had let one that smelled like a tomb. Still, the bastard offered no resistance. Harmon drew the Mex's six-shooters out of their moldy holsters. Rusty old relics. One of them didn't even have a goddamn hammer. He pitched them away. Easy as that. He grunted. Old fraud after all. He turned to signal for Flem and the others to bring the rope. Heard a soft click. Hand flicked: holster was empty! Henry Harmon the Sheriff of Gentry's Junction spun and met the silver bullet from his own gun square in his handsome suntanned face.

(Don Pedo the grand Mexican bandit away he is riding on his little pinto into the setting sun, the silver star of the Sheriff" pinned on his bouncing barriga like a jewel, his saddlebags full to the top, his gold teeth capturing the last gleams of the dying red sun. Clop clop clop clop. Adiós to Gentry's Junction! Behind him, the little town he is in the most festive of roar-ups. Ay! A moment for always to remember! The storekeeper, the banker, the preacher, they swing with soft felicity from scaffolds and the whiskey he is running like blood. Flames leap into the obscuring sky and the womans scream merrily. A remarkable scene! A glorious scene! Ay de mí! How sad to depart it, eh, little pinto? But these are the things of the life, no? Pues — - hee hee! — — adiós! Clop clop clop clop. Red red gleams the little five-pointed star in the ultimate light of the western sun.)

It seemed to happen in a foreign country in the south somewhere. Argentina maybe: Spanish was being spoken, also German, English, Italian, French, who knows what all, so perhaps it was some other place, or no real place at all. I was in the men's washroom, doing a kind of striptease. Apparently I was very good at it. What was odd about it, though (and, by the way, about that time the war had ended, as though to make the striptease possible, or even necessary), was that I had started from the bottom up, so to speak, planning to ease myself to the top, but my face remained completely covered. Except for my eyes, which stared out and somehow, at the same time, stared back at themselves: stared, that is, at their own staring. Well, it was a washroom, there were probably mirrors. "Put the blame on dames," I proposed, arousing a general disgust. The attendant, pointing at my oddly numbered testicles (I make my own luck), called me a "peasant." Perhaps he meant well, but hadn't I just saved his life? Or somebody's anyway, it was not clear (more like shadows on the wall). Nothing was clear except for the danger I was in. I was breaking into little pieces, and not all of them seemed to be my own. "You can't rule the world, Gilda, by passing the shoe." What? I felt haunted. Who was this man who frightened me so, the one hiding in the stall behind the louvered door? I knew he was watching me through the slats, because I could see myself through his eyes. From that perspective, I was both threatening and desirable, so I understood that the fear in the room belonged to the room itself and not to me. Suddenly I felt free, utterly free! I fired the washroom attendant! I shot the Germans! I tossed my head and removed a glove, overswept by the funniest feeling — I was back together again! But then I heard the click of the secret weapon, and realized that my surrender to him (this had already taken place, it was not completely decent) had disturbed the categories. I'd gambled and lost. My pride, my penis, my glove, my enigmatic beauty, my good name, everything. There would be no going home

Dry weeds tumble across a dusty tarred street, lined by low ramshackle wooden buildings. A loosely hinged screen door bangs repetitiously; nearby a sign creaks in the wind. A thin dog passes, sniffing idly at the borders of the street. More tumbleweeds. More dull banging. Finally, a bus pulls up, its windows opaqued with dust and grease. The creaking sign is heard now but not seen. Down the street, a young woman opens a door and peers out, framed by the darkness within. There is a furtive movement on a store roof, martial music in the distance. The door of the bus opens and two men step down. After a brief discussion, one of them shoots the other. Meanwhile, a matriarchal figure waits at the gate of her house like a mediating presence, somber yet hopeful. The sound of a cash register suggests a purchase. In the distance, a riderless horse can be seen, its flanks trembling and glistening with sweat. More martial music, steadily approaching. The figure on the roof is an Indian. A tall man is holding a limp woman in his arms before a window. A couple swirl past, arms linked, singing at the tops of their voices. There is something startling about this. The sky darkens as though before a storm. A richly dressed lady exits the bus, followed by her Negro servant. The Indian leaps, a knife between his teeth. Someone is crying. It is a man, seated at a dinner table with his family, seen through an open doorway. The martial music augments as a marching band comes down the street, trumpets blaring. The Negro servant lifts down several valises, trunks, and hatboxes. Watched by the gunslinger, four men stride vigorously out of one building, the door banging behind them, and enter another. Beneath the back wheel of the bus, the pinned dog lifts its head plaintively, as though searching for someone who is not present and perhaps could never be. A boy with a slingshot takes aim at an old man delivering an unheard graveside soliloquy. Before this, the distant horse was seen to neigh and shake its mane. And then the martial music abruptly ended. Now, the rich lady enters the dilapidated hotel, surrounded by attentive bellhops and followed by her Negro servant, struggling comically with the baggage. A card-player, angry, throws his cards in the dealer's face: trouble seems to be brewing. Somewhere a garbage lid rattles menacingly in an alleyway. All of this is surrounded by darkness. The singing couple swing past again, going the other way, dressed now in identical white tuxedos, crisply edged. Thunder and lightning. The surviving member of the marching band retrieves his battered trumpet and puts it defiantly to his crushed lips. The gunslinger turns to reboard the bus, but is held back by the grizzled old sheriff. What occurs between them is partly hidden behind six young women who, flouncing by, turn their backs in unison and flip their skirts over their heads as though to suggest in this display the terrible vulnerability of thresholds. Is there laughter in the brightly lit hotel lobby? Perhaps it's only the rain beating on tin roofs. The sheriff has shot the Indian. Or an Indian. The bus has departed and several of the doors along the street have closed. Behind one of them a tear glistens in an upturned eye. A strange-looking person walks woodenly past, crossing the rain-slicked tar, staring straight ahead, his arms held out stiffly before him. Down the street, the door opens again and a young woman peers out: the same door as before, the same dark space within, a reassurance that is not one. Beneath the creaking sign, visible once more, a man now pulls a hat brim over his eyes and steps provisionally down off a wooden porch. There is the sound somewhere of suddenly splintering glass, a piano playing. The dog with the broken back, its search forsaken, lowers its thin head in the pounding rain. And the banging door? The banging door?