Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

If Mitch doesn’t want to talk, that’s fine with me.

Maybe he wants to pout. Maybe he wishes he would have hung around, tried his luck on the slots instead of chasing after Doreen.

He’s used to bailing me out. He’s used to it.

But that’s not what happened tonight.

Tonight the shoe was on the other foot.

Tonight it was my turn.

Maybe Mitch can’t handle that. I don’t care. I stare down at the bucket between his feet.

I don’t care at all.

Let him pout.

I shove a tape into the cassette deck.

I pump up the volume and punch the gas.

The not-so-bright lights of Beatty, comin’ right up.

I stepped onto the plank sidewalk — the gun clutched in one sweaty hand, the bucket of dollar coins cradled under my other arm — and I almost bumped into him.

Mitch, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, wearing a SLOWEST GUN IN VIRGINIA CITY T-shirt and carrying a bag of high-priced souvenirs.

“Shit,” he said, spotting the gun in my hand. “What the hell are you doing, Kurt?”

I’m holding onto this damn bucket of dollars, I thought. That’s what I’m doing. You damn near made me spill my money all over this fucking sidewalk —

“Kurt,” Mitch said. “Hey, Kurt. What’s up with the gun?”

“Did you see him?” I asked, glancing over Mitch’s shoulder at the empty street.

“Who?”

“Dingo.” I shook my head, trying to clear it, but shaking my head only made me feel the punch I’d taken, and my ears started ringing again.

“Who are you talking about?”

“John,” I shouted, barely able to hear myself. “John Dingo. Did you see him?”

“Big John Dingo?” Mitch laughed. “Sure I saw him. He walked straight out of the Bucket of Blood on those mechanical legs of his, and we had us a shootout on Main Street. I sent him to that big toy store in the sky.”

“No,” I said. “John Dingo is real, Mitch. He’s Doreen’s guy. And if he sees us, he’s going to gun us down.”

Mitch swore and started in with a barrage of questions. Most of them were about Doreen. I didn’t have a clue to the answers he was after. They weren’t important, anyway. But if I could get Mitch out of town faster by implying that a jealous boyfriend was after his hide, that was all right with me. I didn’t have time to explain about the money, and how I’d gotten it.

I started talking. I held tight to the bucket of dollars. Dingo wanted that money. My money. He wanted to take it from me.

Maybe it was his quarter that I found on the floor. But even if it was Dingo’s, that didn’t mean that the money I’d won belonged to him, too.

I won that money. Dingo didn’t. It was mine. The bucket of dollar coins. And the ten thousand dollar check.

Mine. And I was damn sure going to keep it.

The most I owed Big John Dingo was a quarter.

But the son of a bitch wasn’t going to get that much out of me.

Not one thin dime.

Not one plug nickel.

Not one red fucking cent.

I turned and started down the street. The gun felt good in my hand.

“Hey,” Mitch said. “Hey! Where the hell do you think you’re going! Wait up!”

Just past Beatty, Mitch starts talking.

“Miserable sidewinder shuffled off his mortal coil in the streets of Virginia City,” he says. “That boy pissed on the wrong sombrero, and that’s for damn sure!”

“Yeah,” I say. ‘Yeah!”

Mitch has a head of steam up now. The sleep did him good. He’s talking and talking…

And then we ’re laughing and laughing…

Screeching laughter in the dry desert night.

It was way past time to kiss Virginia City goodbye. I pressed the gas pedal and the Mustang pulled away from the curb.

“Jesus!” Mitch said. “Is that him?”

It was. Big John Dingo, top hand at the Mustang Ranch, striding down the street with a gun in his hand.

His back was to us.

“Turn around,” Mitch said. “Before he sees us! Flip a U-turn, and let’s get the hell out of here!”

I watched Dingo walk. Oh, he had some strut in him. Like fucking John Wayne. Like he was a real big man with that gun in his hand. Like his pockets were jinglin’ with silver dollars, and his belly was full of filet mignon and the best whiskey in the house.

Big John Dingo wasn’t walking like a man who repaired arcade games and sold T-shirts. He wasn’t walking like a man who ate bologna sandwiches for dinner while million-dollar schemes percolated in his brain. And he damn sure wasn’t walking like a man who turned out his own woman.

No. He was strutting like a gunslinger with notches on his gun.

Like the top hand at the fucking Mustang ranch.

I put the car in neutral.

I gunned the motor.

“Kurt!” Mitch yelled. “What the fuck are you DOING!”

Big John turned. I flicked the headlights on bright, and I saw it in his eyes. All the hate. All the self-loathing. All the lust for a buck. All those things that he bottled up day in and day out. All the misery that had tunneled up from the dark pit of his soul because he might have dropped a quarter on the floor of the Bucket of Blood Saloon.

It was a lot to take in all at once, but I knew the look in those eyes all too well.

I saw it every time I stared into a mirror.

I glanced down at the bucket of dollars between Mitch’s feet. At the same time I tapped my shirt pocket, heard the ten thousand dollar check crinkle within.

I glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror.

My eyes were different now.

“Kurt!” Mitch said. “Jesus Christ! Turn the car around!”

I slammed the Mustang into gear just as Big John fired his pistol, and I ran over the bastard a couple of seconds after the bullets pitted the windshield, and I heard him scream as the Mustang dragged him a half-mile down the road.

When the Mustang spit out his miserable carcass and the back wheels kicked him loose, Big John was all done screaming.

Mitch is telling it again as we drive down the Strip.

“Last fool I shot was slower than Columbus comin’ to America, ” he says. “Miserable sidewinder shuffled off his mortal coil in the streets of Virginia City. That boy pissed on the wrong sombrero, and that’s for damn sure!”

I’m not listening. My senses are alive. I can smell the money here. Just like I can see the neon.

It shines through the bullet holes in the windshield. It bathes Mitch in an otherworldly glow. It spills over the slot bucket between his feet, pooling with the coins and Mitch’s blood.

But he’s okay. Mitch is okay.

He’s talking.

Even though he’s got a couple bullet holes in his chest, he’s talking.

I want everyone to hear what he has to say.