Joe Lansdale: Dead in the West

And the boat sailed on.

The last year of the Civil War (a kid then) fighting for the South and losing, knowing too much about death at the age of eighteen.

The men he had slain (dressed in blood-spattered Yankee uniforms) lined up along the bank to wave sadly at him. If it had not been so painful, it would have been comical.

Other scenes: round after round of ammunition exiting through the barrel of his Navy, first as a cap and ball revolver, then later as a converted cartridge revolver, round after round until he could hit nickels tossed into the air and split playing cards along the edge by shooting over his shoulder while holding a mirror in his other hand.

The men he had slain outside of war—those who had pushed him, and those who he had eliminated for their sins against God—lined up along the bank now to smile (sometimes bloody smiles) and wave bye-bye.

(Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.)

He could not look away. He watched the dead men recede into darkness.

More of his life came up in acts and scenes along the river. All of it was shit.

He turned to look at the opposite shore, and the play there was no better. It was the same as the opposite bank.

Sail away.

And now—ahead of him—surfacing from the water, as always, was the worst part of his dream.

Spidery legs broke the surface of the water—too many legs for a true spider, there were ten—wriggling. And then the bulbous body surfaced with them: a giant spiderlike thing with huge red eyes that housed some dark and horrid intelligence.

The spider was as wide as the river. Its legs brushed the banks on either side.

The boatman did not veer. He poled stiffly on.

The Reverend reached for his gun. And it was not there. He was butt-ass naked, shrivel-dicked and scared.

He wanted to open his mouth and yell, but he could not. It was as if fear had sewn his lips shut.

The spider made him tremble, and he could not understand it. Size or not. Red, evil eyes or not. He had faced men, sometimes three at once, and he had sent them all to hell on their shadows, and not once, not even for a fraction of a second, had he known true fear.

Until now, in these dreams. (God, let them be dreams.) The Reverend found that he could not look away from the spider-thing's eyes. It was as if they were swollen with all his sins and weaknesses.

The boat sailed on.

The spider-thing opened its black hair-lined maw, and the boat sailed into its mouth, and as the bow of the boat and the boatman disappeared into the black stench of the creature, the Reverend lost sight of the red eyes, and then all he saw was blackness, and that blackness closed out the light behind him and he was one with hell—

He awoke sweating.

He felt cold and trembly as he sat up in bed.

Lightning was flashing consistently. It was bright enough to be seen through the thick curtains, and when the wind billowed them out, it could be seen even more clearly. The curtains flapped at him like wraiths with their tails nailed to the wall. Rain blew in the window, onto the bed and the toes of his boots. The boots glistened in the lightning flashes like wet snake hide.

Rolling out of bed, he picked up the whisky bottle and took a long drink. It did him no good. It did not feel warm against the back of his throat, and it left no glow in his belly. It might as well have been sun-warmed water.

He went to the window, started to close it, but changed his mind.

He stuck his face out of it into the rain and the wind, as if inviting lightning to reach down from the sky and shatter his head like a pumpkin.

The lightning did not take the bait.

The rain washed his hair into his face, joined the sweat and tears there, dribbled down his shirt front and the back of his collar where the hair flipped.

"Can I not be forgiven?" he asked softly. "I loved her. Deep-down and honest solid, same as any man loves any woman. We were not cow and bull copulating in the meadows. It was love, sister or not. Do you hear me, you old bastard, it was love?"

Suddenly he laughed at himself. He was sounding Shakespearean, or like some of that bad poetry he had read by Captain Jack Crawford.

But the humor did not hold.

He lifted his face to the heavens again, let the rain strike his eyes until they hurt. "For the love of Jesus, oh Lord, forgive me my weakness of the flesh. Test me. Try me. I would do anything for your forgiveness."

As before, there was no answer.

He went back to the bed and joined the bottle. The rain was blowing in violently now, coating the ends of the sheets. He didn't care.

As he sipped, he thought of his life and how he had lived it. It seemed nothing more than a dark, dirty lie.

There was no God. His sermons were words to fill the air and float about like puffs of ragweed.

He slid down the bed and reached his Bible from his coat pocket. It was a well-thumbed edition. Long ago he had lost his passion for it. Sermons were his bread and butter, nothing more. He realized it had been that way for some time.

Stretching out on the bed again, he lay with his back against the headboard—the bottle in one hand, the Bible in the other. He sipped from his bottle.

"Lies," he yelled abruptly, and with all his strength, he tossed the Bible toward the window with, "Take this, you heavenly bastard!"

His aim was off. It did not go through the open part of the window as he had planned. It hit high up, and even before the glass broke, he knew he would be buying a new one for fat Montclaire.

The glass shattered, and the Bible flapped out into the night like a multiwinged bird.

Then, even as he watched, it reached a point of darkness beyond his vision, and as he was bringing the whisky bottle to his lips, it came flapping back through like a homing pigeon. It struck the bottle, and shattered it, dealt him a stunning blow to the face. Glass from the bottle cut his chin and blood dribbled down.

He sat completely upright.

In his lap lay the Bible. Open.

A droplet of blood dripped from his chin and landed in the left-hand margin of Revelations 22:12.

He read it.

AND BEHOLD, I COME QUICKLY; AND MY REWARD IS WITH ME, TO GIVE TO

EVERY MAN ACCORDING AS HIS WORK SHALL BE.

Another drop hit next to verse 14.

BLESSED ARE THEY WHO DO HIS COMMANDMENTS, THAT THEY MAY

HAVE RIGHT TO THE TREE OF LIFE, AND MAY ENTER IN THROUGH THE

GATES OF THE CITY.

Slowly, the Reverend closed the book.

There was a lump like a hairball in his throat. He and the bed reeked of rain and whisky, and there was also the faint aroma of his blood.

He worked the lump from his throat and fell on his knees beside the bed, hands clasped.

"Thy will be done, oh Lord. Thy will be done."

Still on his knees, he prayed for an hour, and it was the first time he had done so in a long time and deeply meant it.

Later, he cleaned himself at the basin, and shook the sheets free of glass, undressed, bedded proper.

Before he drifted off, he wondered if he would be worthy of whatever test the Lord had prepared for him here in Mud Creek.

It did not matter. Whatever it was, he would try with all his might.

He slept.

And he did not dream.

VIII

With the sun kicked out and a gold doubloon moon rose in its place—a moon that shone down with a bright, almost unnatural hue on Mud Creek and the surrounding countryside—the nightwalkers began to walk.

The livery gave up its tenant—the padlock dripping off into the dirt like melted butter, only to fall to the ground whole again, and finally to return locked and solid to its place.

Just outside of town at the Furgesons, their little month old girl died. Next morning, amidst much wailing, it would be attributed to natural causes.