Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Midas nodded vigorously. That had to be the way it was. He was safe now. Still, Midas kept his eyes closed. He listened intently, and it wasn’t long before he heard music coming from the player piano he’d borrowed from that Fiddler whorehouse.

It stood all alone out there in the night, beneath red lanterns that glowed with promises of happiness and love of the eternal variety, playing to an audience of dead men.

Midas shivered.

It’s not so bad down here in the ground, waiting in the darkness. It’s almost peaceful. Not cowardly at all. It’s only the smart thing to do, after all.

Waiting… all alone… in the darkness.

Midas lay down on the floor of the new shit shaft and curled himself into a ball. He thought of his grandpa and his grandma, of the night so long ago when Grandma had sliced off Grandpa’s willie and tossed it down the old shit shaft. He thought of that little hunk of meat nestled down there under all that crap, just waiting, year after year, without a single complaint.

Midas Gerlach fell asleep in the hard earth of Fiddler, California, knowing for sure and for certain that patience, indeed, was a virtue.

When it was over, music came. Lie could not imagine where it came from, for Father’s terror in fanged boots had entered the goblin’s house shortly after the music began, and most everyone else was dead.

Lie had been waiting for the dark man to come. Her eyes took him in, head to toe. The blood, the burns, all of him. Still, he looked good, better than before. The spark that she had glimpsed in his razor-edged glance now seemed to have settled into his eyes for good, and he seemed strangely content.

This pleased her.

She knew that he could not understand what had happened this night, or how he had survived it. Many questions were locked behind his eyes. It seemed obvious that he thought the answers to his questions were locked behind her unspeaking lips.

But this was not so. And even if it were so, Lie could no more answer his questions than ask her own. As her father often said, she had the voice of a flower. And a flower could speak not a single word.

She picked up the carpetbag. He collected fistfuls of gold coins. He dropped them into the toy palace and hoisted it onto his good shoulder. Together, they left the white goblin’s house.

She knew he would not understand what she had to do. On the porch, she stopped and opened the carpetbag, removing a wad of paper money and a box of lucifers.

She lit a match and set the wad of bills aflame. She did this for luck — a custom learned in Father’s gambling hall. She did not expect her dark man to understand such things.

But some things did not require an explanation. The dark man seemed to understand all too well. He turned to a strange wooden box which stood on the front porch. A row of black and white teeth danced on a lone shelf on this box, teeth pressed by invisible fingers. Sprightly music spilled from the box’s heart. Strange magic Lie could not understand.

The dark man smashed several whiskey bottles over the box, then collected the burning bills from the place Lie had dropped them. He fed the dying flames with a larger wad of money, and with these he set the magic box aflame.

Lie took off the white dress the goblin had forced upon her, shed too the horrible little booties with their dangling pearls. These she tossed into the fire.

The dark man draped his scorched duster over her shoulders. She slipped her arms into the big sleeves — one was little more than an ashy flap of material — and buttoned the front. Then she snatched up the carpetbag and started toward the wagon, charred coattails whispering against her ankles.

The dark man walked at her side, the toy palace filled with gold tucked under one arm. Behind them the flames grew hotter, roaring now, and the sprightly music died away.

Lie tossed the carpetbag in the back of the wagon.

Gunfire exploded in the distance.

Lie shivered, and the dark man laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, pointing at the moon above. “It’s only that damn coyote fella. His blood must be on the boil tonight.”

Lie did not laugh, but she smiled.

There was nothing left to do but take her dark man’s hand.

And lead him from that place.

(For Woody Strode and Robert Ryan)