Well, were almost done with the year. Two months to go. By the time this goes live, we’ll be close to our final episode of season two of The Nephilim Hunter podcast. It’s not a western but it is set in the Pacific Northwest.

You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. One such link is here:

The Nephilim Hunter | iHeart

Take a listen if you haven’t already and let us know what you think.

At any event, we’ll see you the next go ’round.

Life has changed a cowboy’s course,
rides a truck more than a horse.
Still, loves the feel of a saddle,
takes great pride in raising cattle.
No female wranglers in days of yore,
now, they handle banter, perform any chore.
All work hard for weekly pay,
chasing strays, keeping prey away.
Enjoy a faithful dog,
and warmth of a blazing campfire log.
Raise alfalfa, but no simple baler,
need a forklift and a semi-trailer.
Appreciate the smell of fresh hay,
and sunsets at the end of a good day.
Open range and trail drives are long past,
yet the lure of the prairie holds fast.
At sunset, continues to pray;
at the end of the week, still likes to play.

Jeral Williams is a retired professor and late-in-life poet. He was raised in the West and now lives in the South. His love for the West has never waned.

Day One.

California Pacific Railway.

“Goddamn you, Thomas,” O’Nally had said. “That shipment was worth a fortune, and you let the coppers nab it.”

“I’m sorry, boss,” Okie replied. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“I know you will. Every red cent. Luckily there’s money to be made out west, and you’ll bring it back to me if you ever want to come back home again.”

Okie jolted awake. On his left was the empty train car. On his right he tried to not to look out on the deep blue Pacific Ocean that trundled past. He was glad there was a window separating them. Everyone told him it’d be beautiful. But he didn’t believe them then and he certainly didn’t believe them now. He’d seen seas before back east. Seas of tall grass and wheat swaying in the breeze, shimmering an emerald green or bright gold depending on the season. No one gawked at fields the way they did with water. He didn’t understand it. There may be ticks, but you couldn’t drown in grass. Why take the chance?

Beneath his seat he could feel the railcar wheels rhythmically spin on the track. He folded and unfolded his list of contacts over and over again with every bump of the rails. Beyond him the tide foamed white on the blue waters of the Pacific, rolling in and out as it always had. Everything was in rhythm, except for Thomas “Okie” Graff, whose life had spun out of control.

When they reached Purissima, Okie, hat on his head and coat under his arm, stepped off the platform into the dusty, coastal air. His first task was to stop at the telegram office and send a message to Boss O’Nally.

ARRIVED – STOP – WILL START SEARCH – STOP – NEWS SOON – STOP

His second task was to speak to his local contact. He unfolded the piece of paper in his pocket and looked at the address as he had a hundred times before on the train. Glancing up and down the dusty streets he wondered if they even had addresses here. The new century could almost walk, yet Purissima languished in the last one. Modern convenience was a fairytale out here, while the faded memory of the eighteen hundreds was reality. Everyone told him that Frisco was the center of civilization on the west coast, but travel a few miles south to Purissima and you traveled back in time.

Okie’s contact ran a small antiques store in a dead corner of town. The interior was filled to bursting with odds and ends and sundry junk, but there seemed to be an emphasis on bent and burnished brass instruments. The air was an acrid musk. Just smelling it invited moths to chew on Okie’s clothes.

“Howdy, fella,” Okie said to the small man behind the counter. “You Matteo? I believe we have a mutual friend in a man named O’Nally.”

“Si, ciao,” the owner replied, small eyes peeking through heavy brows. “O’Nally? Lo conosco.”

“Ehh…” Okie hesitated, vaguely recognizing only a few words and unsure how to continue.

He’d hoped he could walk in, ask his questions, and leave town quickly. But that wasn’t how life worked these days. Instead he leaned in conspiratorially, dropping his voice so the trombones couldn’t hear.

“Listen, I’m here on a job thanks to our mutual friend. I’m looking for the del Solano’s fortune. Gold? You understand?”

Matteo looked Okie over before he burst out laughing. The acrid musk drifted from his open mouth forcing Okie to step back.

“Quella storia esiste da sempre!” The antique man said. “Tutti vengono in città aspettandosi oro o pesos. Ma e una bugia. La famiglia ha fatto fortuna con chiodi placcati d’oro per sigillare le loro bare. Pazzi.”

Okie, not knowing where one word ended and the next began, couldn’t cut in. He felt as if he was standing in a storm back home, caught between the wind of the man’s lungs and the rain from his lips. For the first time he noticed the large flag pinned on the far wall half obscured by mountains of books. It was a tricolor; green, white, and red.

“Damn,” he mumbled. “You’re a genuine Italian, aren’t you? D’you even have an English word in your head?”

“Voi americano venite a fare le stesse domande e io vi dico la stessa cosa,” Matteo continued, giggling with every word like a broken reed. “Avrai più fortuna con gli scarafaggi e dei morti.”

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Okie said, shaking his contact note in the man’s face. “One last time: O’Nally; del Solano; Gold. Anything?”

“Vai a giocare nella terra con gli altri bambini,” the Italian taunted. “Vedrai che ho ragione.”

Okie turned on his heels and stalked out of the shop. Scratchy laughter echoing after him like a rusting trombone.

Stepping out into the afternoon sun of Purissima he decided he already hated this town. His tongue was dry as he ran it across his lips. Clearly, his third task here was to get himself a drink.

#

Day Two.

Kern’s Barroom.

The first evening in Purissima had slipped by under the cover of night. The next morning continued much the same with its revelries trailing into the afternoon. This was how things were done back east and Okie hoped to soothe his anger at the situation with a little cup of home. Several cups actually. Thirteen shots of whiskey, five beers, a jug of hard cider, and a

bottle of tequila to be exact. A kind stranger had offered a sip of their imported Chateau Latour, but in his drunkenness Okie confused France with Italy and, remembering the antique store, roundly refused. To anyone else this might seem an absurd amount of alcohol, but Okie never kept track of his drinks before, so to him it felt quite reasonable.

“I’m a made man,” Okie mumbled, head on the counter. “Y’know that?”

“Sure, fella,” the bartender replied. “Made of what?”

“Muscle. Respect. Status with Boss O’Nally. Booze, opium, girls. I made sure it all flowed smoothly. At least ‘til I found the bottle.”

“Then maybe you should muscle your way through those doors and go home where you belong.”

Okie watched the afternoon sunset through the dirty westward windows, golden light transitioning into a deep orange. Without even stepping foot in the Pacific he felt like he was drowning himself here.

“Can’t,” he replied, pulling himself up from the bar and tossing whatever coins he could find in his pockets. “Not ’til the job’s done. Nothing’s waiting for me ’til then.”

Walking was a better idea when Okie was sitting down. From a barstool he could imagine going anywhere. In reality crawling was ideal, but even he had standards – which was stumbling. Distance and staying in a straight line was harder to attain. Night was surprisingly cold in California, forcing Okie to button his coat up tight. Everyone talked about how the west was warm and comfortable, but go far enough west and it got cold again.

From the bar Okie wandered through Purissima, watching lampposts glowing in the dark, their flames flickering in the breeze. If the town was sleepy during the day, he wasn’t sure what to call it at night. Comatose? Okie would’ve loved to be comatose right about then, but he’d picked up a lead about gold at the bar between glasses of whiskey. It was a dead lead, but it led him north to the edge of town where the lampposts ended, leaving him alone in the dark with the ruins of the del Solano hacienda.

The low wall had collapsed in some places, the cream-colored stucco had begun to crack, and the wooden gate had disappeared entirely. Esto tambien pasara was written on what remained of the front archway, framed by bullet holes. A large coastal oak grew through the roof and windows of the main villa. Smaller, dilapidated buildings still stood arranged in a ring, tiled roofs scattered in some places, replaced by bird’s nests in others. The scene swayed in Okie’s vision; with each uncertain step the walls and rubble rolled from left to right and back again. He was sea foam, drunkenly drifting along with the flotsam of the past century.

Okie let himself in through the front door – which was gone anyways. He lit a match as he stepped through the empty doorframe. The interior of the villa was a mess. The roof sagged, the walls leaned, and the paint peeled. Every single drawer, shelf, desk, and table had been knocked over. Okie hadn’t been the first person to come looking for the fortune. He’d sometimes wondered what it was like to search through someone else’s investigation or dig through someone’s trash as though it might reveal something new. Now he’d find out.

He didn’t know where to start or what to look for that might relate to gold. So he meandered, trying to make out generational detritus in the dark. It was what he imagined walking on the seabed might be like. All blacks and purples, with a glint of light that reflected the moon, and the crushing weight of his drunken stupor. He’d found another spot to drown himself besides the Pacific. It was here, at the bottom of the ocean, that he understood his issues with alcohol had mixed with a childhood fear of the sea to create something new. To him, the worst fate that could befall him was drowning no matter where he was. The second worst was to be in Purissima.

In some rooms it looked as though everything of value had been lifted in search of the fortune. Some chairs even missed their nails and there were the remnants of enough broken locks to surmise anything interesting had been taken long before. Other rooms looked untouched; their scavengers had been precise and thoughtful. The family portraits had been freed of their gilded frames. It looked like a swarm of romantics had descended to arrange the ruin just so.

Okie didn’t consider himself a romantic. He thought he was an idiot, but only admitted as such when inebriated.

Something crunched beneath him. Glancing down, he saw a cracked mirror and in it a reflection of the off-kilter drunk who’d screwed up so badly in Chicago that he’d been sent west to chase ghost stories.

“Shhh!” he hissed at the drunk, finger to his lips.

The reflection froze.

Above the mirror, hanging from the wall was a family portrait. Prying it from its hook Okie looked the faded photograph over. A note revealed that it had been taken at a celebration for one Amador del Solano taking the cloth at the local mission. His family, all gone now, gathered around him laughing. The young initiate smiled out from better days. The back dated the photograph at fifty-eight years. Maybe, Okie wondered, there was a del Solano still kicking around in town who had the truth to their fortune that he needed.

#

Day Three.

Mission Santa Serra.

The labyrinthine hallways of the local mission were never meant to be navigated with a hangover of the magnitude that pounded in Okie’s head. The walls were a featureless white that blended together to hide every turn. Small wooden crucifixes sat at measured regular intervals. The only difference to be found was the odd window where sunlight and shadows spread across the opposite wall in varying shades of white which were all there in their redundancy.

Nuns wandered through the hallways with suspicious eyes and curled frowns peeking out from underneath their habits. Okie initially smiled and nodded, but the more he encountered their stares the more he simply avoided them, walking on like he had somewhere important to be. Which wasn’t a lie exactly, though it wasn’t a truth either. Okie simply hoped for the divine providence that he hadn’t passed Amador del Solano in the graveyard on his way in. Wasn’t such faith the point of a house of God?

Okie made his way to a small dormitory door labeled “A” and knocked lightly. Finding it unlocked, he peered in.

Seated on the small bed was an even smaller monk shriveled into his cassock. He stared at a small window at the corner of his room where a small family of thrushes had made a nest. Okie took a step in. The old man’s eyes didn’t twitch or move in the slightest; his irises had a grey film like the morning fog that rolled off the Pacific.

“’Scuse me, padre,” Okie said.

“Hola?” The friar replied, barely turning his head. “Is it dinner time already? God bless.”

“Naw. I had some questions for you.” Okie peeked out the door before closing and locking it. He sat down in the nearby chair. It was too small for him. His knees came up to his shoulders. “You wouldn’t happen to be Amador del Solano, would you?”

“Si. I was that man long ago.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, padre, but I’ve come looking for your family’s fortune. What can you tell me about it?”

“Gringos have asked me that question so many times before and every time I bury it. But like Christ, it always rises three days later. Give it up. Save your soul.”

“I can’t do that,” Okie replied. “I can say my Hail Marys if you’d like, but y’all have enough nuns as it is.”

“Greed is such a terrible sin. But we of the west are damned with it. The snake told Sutter to pluck gold from the river and we tore Eden apart looking for the source. Even my family worshipped it like God’s own light.”

“What’s done is done. The entire world came here looking for their fortune. Someone has to find it. Might as well be me.”

Amador sorrowfully shook his head.

“What about your family?” Okie continued. “D’you have any idea where they might have put it?”

“My family? Gone. I entered the mission before the gringos arrived. Next time I looked out my family and my country had vanished. Do you know the theory of immaculate de-conception?”

“What’s that?” Okie asked. “Is it gold?”

“Where God puts good onto the Earth with one hand, he wipes it away with the other. It’s happened many times before. Sodom and Gomorrah. Noah’s flood.”

“And now the del Solanos? That’s a mighty long stretch and I’m barely following you as is.”

Amador turned to look at – and through – Okie for the first time. His grey eyes never wavered, the mind behind them half gone.

“Who are you? An angel?”

“No.”

“A bird?”

“Naw. Just a man.”

“What sort of man?”

Okie glanced around the room, trying not to meet the blind friar’s gaze. The thrushes twittered. The shadow on the wooden crucifix grew a little longer.

“A drunk,” he replied. “An easterner…”

He wasn’t sure how to explain that he’d come here to get back into the good graces of Boss O’Nally several states eastward. A terrifying man who could make him disappear with a snap of his fingers. In truth, Okie had been set free when he was sent so far away. Like the thrushes, he could fly wherever he wanted if not for the golden cage he sought to reenter.

“Are you a bad man?” Amador asked.

“Mediocre more so.” Okie replied.

“And if you don’t find this fortune?”

“Dunno.”

He would drown himself. Again.

“A shame. I can’t help you because I’m no longer Amador del Solano. My tongue took an oath to the church, my eyes no longer see this world, and my hands can no longer write in Spanish. A shame, I would’ve loved to speak to a bird.”

Amador fell silent, receded further into his cassock, and turned back to the thrushes on the windowsill.

Okie remained in the tiny chair. The wood squeaked with every slight motion he made and every sound was thunderous in such a quiet space.

“God dammit,” he grumbled under his breath.

#

Day Four.

Grizzly Square.

Okie watched the sun glow through the rolling paper as it curled in his fingers. He didn’t like to admit it, but his talk with the padre, short as it was, had left an impact on him. He admitted that he’d been a drunk for a long time now, stumbling from one bottle to another. He’d been drenched with the stuff physically of course, but now his very being and dare he say his soul had taken on a dampness that only frayed with time. Okie would rot away soon if he wasn’t careful.

He’d found two solutions to combat this. The first was drying himself up, which is why he’d settled on the small park bench next to the broken fountain. The second was to find a

different vice to interest him. He couldn’t just drop the bottle and walk away with no substitute. He’d soon be crawling back under the cover of night. Instead he turned to smoking, which is why he was rolling his own cigarettes as he contemplated his next move. The pleasing scent of dried Virginian tobacco lingered around his nose while he sprinkled it in the paper, twisted each end tightly, and ran the tip of his tongue along the crease as though it was a letter.

Holding the cigarette up in the sunlight, Okie couldn’t help but admire his creation. His child. It had a little bit of him in it; like his rail-thin constitution. This was his fourth attempt. The first three sat snugly in his breast pocket waiting for their brother.

“Vagrant!” Shrieked a voice next to him, high pitched and authoritative, like a crow choked out of a rooster.

Okie jolted in surprise, knocking his head against the bench’s armrest and juggling the loose cigarette between his hands. For a moment he was truly fearful that he would drop it in the dirt.

“Answer me, vagrant, what’re you doing?” The voice came from a child, one of three who stood inches from Okie’s seat. None of them looked a day over ten. The speaker wore oversized cavalry boots polished to a noon-day shine and carried a metal fireplace poker over his shoulder.

“I’m sitting,” Okie replied. “That a crime now?”

“It is when there’s work to do! When there’s a war on!”

“There’s no war on.”

“Maybe to a vagrant like you, but to us, there’s always a war on.”

“I’m no vagrant, boy. Where are your parents?”

“My mama’s Columbia and my daddy’s Uncle Sam, hobo. They’re busy.”

“That doesn’t make sense. How can your daddy be your uncle?”

“America’s the land of liberty, he can be whatever he wants. Not that a tramp like you would understand.”

“Well it’s my liberty to sit here and you’re bothering me. Go play somewhere else.”

“We don’t play. We fight.”

“You should join us, mister,” the second child said. He wore a military parade jacket far too large for him. Coattails and sleeves dragged in the dirt.

“Where?”

“Mexico,” the first child noted.

“Mexico!? Who are you?” Okie asked, thoroughly annoyed at this point.

“Lassen,” the leader of the troop replied, before motioning to the second boy. “That’s Stanislaus. And lastly, Glenn.”

Glenn, the smallest, wore a crumpled shako on his head with a white feather twice his size. Slung from his shoulder was an empty can of peaches on which he tapped rat-tatatat-tat for good measure. Okie had to admit the boy had good rhythm.

“Captain Fremont told us to wait here for his return and watch for the enemy.” Lassen said. “But it’s been too long. We march for Vera Cruz!”

“We did that already,” Okie replied. He hadn’t of course. But his grandfather had gone to Vera Cruz and all that came back was a sad little portrait which collected dust in his mother’s

house.

“We did?” Stanislaus asked, despondent.

“Yep.”

“You wouldn’t be lying to us now, would you?” Lassen growled. “That’s subversive behavior.”

“Why would I lie to you? At this rate I might be face down in a Frisco’ saloon dreamin’ you little giblets to life.”

Okie truly hoped that wasn’t the case. He was trying to be better.

“If you ain’t lying, then what’re you doing here?”

“Looking for gold,” Okie snorted. Saying so felt like telling a dog he was looking for salvation. All they could do was bark in response.

“Gold!?” Lassen snarled. “You’re interested in gold when liberty’s at stake? You really are a subversive.”

Ratatat went Glenn’s little can in affirmation.

“My mama always talked about gold too,” Stanislaus mused.

Okie sat up instantly.

“How much?” he asked.

“Shut up about your ma!” Lassen snapped, “You’re a soldier now. You kissed her goodbye and now you belong to dear, sweet Columbia.”

“How much?” Okie asked again, leaning in.

“She’d talk about it in her sleep when she worked at the Mission,” Stanislaus replied nervously.

“Where can I find her?”

“Don’t listen to him, soldier! He’s trying to make you soft! Make you wanna go home!” Lassen shouted, waving his poker before turning on Okie. “Vagrant! Tramp! Hobo! Transient! Vagabond! Drifter! Beggar! Subversive!”

Glenn drummed along in agreement. Ratatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatatat.

“Boys, boys,” Okie chuckled. “I may be a bad influence, but I’m certainly no subversive.” He reached into his breast pocket and grabbed three of the cigarettes. “If you can tell me your mother’s name and where to find her, I might just have a few children of my own who’d want to sign up for your little war.”

#

Day Five.

King’s Washhouse & Laundry.

As evening fell Okie peered over the wooden fence at the back of the washhouse. A sign at the front door said they were closed for the day, but Okie felt he was close to the gold and his desperation drove him to trespass.

He’d never gotten around to smoking. Nor had he touched a drop of alcohol in the day and a half it’d taken to track down Stanislaus’ mother. It seemed she’d worked every conceivable occupation someone could in a town this small. Some of those jobs didn’t even exist anymore or locals never knew they existed in the first place.

On the other side of the high wooden fence he found a wide courtyard with a large

communal washtub filled with suds and soap. The scent of lye was suffocating and inescapable. At the other end of the clearing were numerous rows of clotheslines draped with drying attire. Among them were crates and bags of more garments folded, jumbled, or stacked. What was to be washed and what sent home? There was too much stuff and no structure. In the middle of it all was a washerwoman; her hands submerged in water, her dress drenched, and a rhythmic whistle on her lips.

“Barbara!” Okie hissed.

The woman stiffened and glanced around the yard. Finding no one she slowly began to crane her neck skywards to stare at the starry night.

“Over here.” Okie said again, clambering over the fence.

Barbara paled at the sight of the strange man. She took a step back and grabbed hold of the washboard should she need to hit him with it.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Do I owe you money?”

“None of that. Name’s Okie. I’m a friend,” Okie replied, thinking for a second before adding: “Of your son.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about you sniffing around.”

“And I’ve heard you have answers about the del Solano gold.”

“What about it?” the woman asked, taking another step back.

“Please,” Okie sighed. “I just want to know what you know. What’s it gonna cost me?”

Barbara’s eye twitched at the word “cost” before glancing between the door to the laundry and Okie who offered his friendliest smile.

“Help me with the wash,” Barbara said, offering up a bundle of clothes.

Having never washed clothes in his life, Okie feared it was a monumental task.

“Fine,” he replied.

He rolled up his sleeves, stepped up to the washtub, took the garments, and paused. Between the suds the water was black in the night. He couldn’t see the bottom or his own reflection. Menial labor was one thing, drowning was another, but it was all a means to an end. He swallowed his fear and submerged his hands. It looked cold, but the water was warm to the touch and the clothes were soft on his skin. He wondered if this was what the Pacific felt like.

“Start talking,” Okie said, catching his wavering voice and watching the woman from across the tub.

“I worked at Mission Santa Serra back in the day,” Barbara replied. “Organized mail for the monks, including Amador del Solano.”

“You were a nun?”

“No, a runaway. I broke with some no good vaqueros and took shelter with the monks hoping they wouldn’t turn me over. Eventually I had to move on.”

“What about the gold?”

“Amador had several unopened letters he got after he joined the church. But he didn’t want them nor did he open them. I assume news about the gold is inside.”

“Did you open them?”

“No,” Barbara said, shaking her head. “Figured they’re worth more unopened. At least I hope so.”

“The rumor’s been around fifty years and you’ve been here a decade, yet you haven’t sold them. Why?”

“Maybe it’s my punishment for stealing the letters in the first place. Now I’m reduced to odd jobs. Folks either don’t trust me or figure they’ll have a target on their backs once the gold’s theirs.”

“You mean like me?” Okie asked.

“Sure. I thought you were coming to collect from me when I first heard about you. Eastern criminal mastermind and all that.”

“Ain’t no mastermind.”

“Then why do you want the fortune? Why put faith in unopened letters?”

“Gotta’ buy my way back home. Back into the good graces of a man I failed.”

Barbara nodded, pondering words and laundry in equal measure.

“It won’t work. Money doesn’t buy love, it only buys you a night and you have to keep paying for each night afterwards. I should know.”

“How so?” Okie said, squeezing suds from the laundry. “Working job after job, stuck here, always looking over your shoulder. What do you know exactly?”

“You’ve got to put your faith in change. Big or small. That’s what the west is all about. I’ve moved past the gold, maybe you’ll get something out of it. Who knows.”

“You’re starting to sound like a nun.”

“Maybe I stole more from them than just letters.”

Okie sighed,

“You have ‘em, then?”

“Always do.”

“What’ll it cost me?”

Barbara’s eye twitched at that word again. She seemed to watch it roll off Okie’s tongue the way he sought the smell of alcohol at the bottom of a bottle.

“How much you got?” she asked.

“Not as much as you’re hoping for that’s for sure.”

“The rest of the wash, then,” Barbara said before pointing at Okie’s breast pocket. “And gimme that.”

Okie glanced down at his last cigarette. Carefully, almost mournfully, he took it from his pocket and handed it to the washerwoman. He wouldn’t be the one to smoke it after all. Barbara plucked it from his fingers, stepped back, and lit it. Okie wished she’d treat it more gently, but he should’ve known better by the look of her kid.

With no more cigarettes to weigh him down, Okie worried that the water would grab hold of his hand and drag him down to the bottom. Or maybe, with nothing else holding him back he would leap in. The bubbles looked more and more like sea foam under the lantern light. He could almost imagine the telegram sent back to Boss O’Nally.

OKIE DROWNED IN WASHTUB – STOP – BURIED AT SEA – STOP – LAUNDRY ON SALE – STOP.

Yet there he remained on solid ground, breathing of his own volition.

Barbara rummaged through a satchel hanging from the wall and pulled out several old, crinkled envelopes. She held them up in the flickering light and smelled them for a moment before placing them snugly in Okie’s breast pocket. He wanted to believe the new weight would ground him, or just touching the envelopes would lead to a stroke of enlightenment, but instead the paper only crinkled against his chest.

“What if nothing changes?” Okie asked.

“You can’t think like that,” Barbara replied. “Not until you’re dead.”

#

Day Six.

Purissima Cemetery.

Dearest Amador,

Father finally passed last night. We missed you at his bedside, but I know you were praying for him. He spoke to you in his final moments as though you were there. He’s to be buried in the family cemetery, mother wants you to nail his coffin shut and conduct the funeral. It would be good to see you again, your family misses you.

The spade bit into the dry earth with a soft crunch. Okie placed his foot and his full weight onto the step and felt the metal slowly sink lower and lower into the dirt. Wiggling the handle, he put his strength behind it, pried up a clod of poppy covered soil and tossed it aside onto the pile growing next to him. It was slow work for one person.

As the ocean fog crept in, his only company was the marble angel that topped the Del Solano family tomb. The statue’s outstretched arms were meant to welcome mourners and family, but now it only welcomed Okie and his grave robbing. He’d set his hat and coat on her before he started; hell he’d even brought flowers. Felt like the right thing to do. The angel didn’t care. Nor did the dead.

Everyone says there’ll be war with the United States; some of our anglo neighbors already eye us with suspicion. Rumors of our gold have begun again. Mother insists we should

move south once father is buried. Each piece of bad news feels like one of Christ’s nails in my heart. You should come with us and help, but I know you won’t.

Surrounding the main tomb were headstones and busts of del Solanos. Extended branches of the family who’d come back home to be buried together. Okie couldn’t help but notice the deaths in the family had ceased after Eighteen Forty-Six. Either they’d bought immortality with the last of their fortune or no one had been around here to die since then.

He stared at the angel again. The marble face was half illuminated by the moon and half by his lantern. Scattered shadows cast strange, unreadable expressions across the emotionless stone. It was up to Okie to decipher them and he preferred not to. At this moment he preferred not to think or worry. Especially when he was so close. He kept his gaze downwards, watching the dirt break and sift away, grubs and worms crawling free, until the wooden face of the casket was revealed as though floating to the surface of the grave. Most identification had long since worn away, but the family surname was still visible under the moon.

Every time I talk to Mother about the gold, she always says: “The moment our ancestors found it, and the rumors got out, it was the nail in the coffin of this family.” We have so little now. Father’s death and our impending move has hit her hard. The family feels smaller than ever, and sometimes I think you’re dead when you don’t write back. It would do us all some good if you came home.

Nail in the coffin. The phrase had lodged in Okie’s head and led him to this hill overlooking the Pacific.

Okie hopped down into the open grave. The coffin was heavier than he’d expected, forcing him to descend into the yawning earth, submerged between dirt walls on either side. For

a moment he worried the walls would crash down and drown him. His chest heaved at the thought, but he shook his paranoia away. He’d come so close, he couldn’t – he wouldn’t give in to his fears now.

The casket remained still. He placed the metal tip of his shovel at the joins of the coffin and pushed. The blade cracked through, splintering wood and prying the craftsmanship apart.

Okie tossed the shovel aside, fell to his knees, and reached into the broken joins of the casket. He could feel what he sought. Cold metal against his skin. With worn hands he took hold of it as best he could, wiggled the prize loose, and held it in the light.

A gold plated nail. Each join in the coffin was sealed by one. Each coffin in the cemetery held a dozen. Okie stood among the mother-load. All he had to do was take it from the dead.

With gold in hand, he began to pry the coffin apart board by board, like plucking pearls from a clam. Each nail came easily enough from the rotted wood and Okie could feel his palm grow heavier and heavier with each new addition. Squeezing his hand, the golden points pricked his skin. Each nail was a ticket, a meal, and a room for the long trip back east. He plotted out his path as he worked. He could come home a dime store cowboy, a real adventurer, a success. He could return to his made man status like nothing had ever happened, maybe even with a bit more respect and a grateful welcome by Boss O’Nally.

Okie paused. Something nagged at the back of his mind. It wasn’t until the left side of the casket was opened that he finally noticed the smell: damp sod and sea breeze mixed with rot and decay, punctuated by the chemical scent of formaldehyde. Okie had been so focused on the gold, he’d forgotten there was a dead man inside. Or maybe he’d preferred to ignore that from the start.

Peering inside to find more nails, Okie couldn’t help but stare at the corpse for the first time. Half illuminated under the moonlight; the skin was long gone leaving only pale bones dressed in a fine suit. As the living man reached for another glint of gold the dead man’s skull wobbled and rolled to the side to stare at him. Okie froze. He’d told himself that he needed this fortune. The dead had no use for it. According to the letters they’d had little use for it in life either.

Things could go back to how they’d been. That’s how this all started. Okie could go home to serve in the shadow of a man he feared, buying back his life at the price of golden nails until they became the joins in his own coffin. He could be banal, content, and unchanging, trying to recreate the past before he’d come west. He could waste away as Purissima personified. Or – he glanced at the corpse, the skull almost smiling – he could take what he’d found, leave, and start anew far away from Boss O’Nally. Free as a bird. No one cared where he was now, why should they care where he went from here? His handful of nails was more than enough to support him wherever he went. They seemed to jingle in agreement.

“Sorry, fella,” Okie said, rolling the skull back into place. “I guess we’re gonna’ have to share.”

The coffin was sealed up as best he could manage without carpentry skills. He reburied it, and bade the angel one last tip of the hat and a fond farewell.

Standing at the coast that night, he hurled a single golden nail into the Pacific as payment for the water not drowning him when it could have so many times before. Where to next? Even Okie wasn’t sure, but he made sure he didn’t stay to see the seventh day dawn in Purissima.

Marsden Lyonwahl lives in his head. A graduate from the University of Washington, he currently resides in his small hometown of Los Angeles. Out there he is inundated with cowboys – most of them from New York. This is not the last you’ve heard from him.

            Walking downstream along the riverbank they held hands, a girl in frayed braids and a boy in tattered Sunday clothes. Talking was impossible beside the deafening surge of white water. A granite wall bent the course of the river southward, between the jutting spine of hills along the horizon. They walked through the land clinging to one another, two flowers in an abyss of cactus and light.

            When they came across a snake, the boy sat down in the dust watching as the girl looked around. Finding a stone big enough to wield with both hands, she walked over to the viper and dropped iton its head. She waited, hands on her hips, until it was still. Then, she reached down and seized the tail, stretching it out. The boy got up looking for sticks and pieces of driftwood to make a fire. When he had an armload, he raised his eyebrows. Fire. Since they escaped the raid, she had counted the sun coming up three times. They had traveled far, yet she was unsure about starting a fire. She stopped what she was doing, scanned around, then pointed toward shade where the bank met the rise. Then, she pulled the knife which was too large for her hands, took off the head and tail, and tossed the rattle to the boy. He shook it beside his ear while he watched her skin the snake and remove its guts.

             After she cleaned the snake and the knife in the river, she dried the blade on her skirt, stood up, and looked all around. The endless green blur across the water along the other bank seemed full of eyes. Having seen nothing since they had struck out, her better judgement shrank in the wake of hunger and her brother’s smile. The meat seemed a heavenly gift indeed, and she wondered, why had Eve not done the same thing in the garden? Why had she not just taken the serpent’s head off before it had a chance to speak? Even now, we would be living in Eden, she thought.

            Starting the fire reminded her of how they had fled from the billowing smoke drifting over the trees and the commotion. She had seen men on painted horses riding away, carry people off, dragging one man by his feet. Her aunt and uncle lay on the ground. She had dragged her brother into the trees, hustling him into the hollow and away, between the sandstone cliffs toward the river. She shook her head, considering how far they traveled, which was not so far, really, when she considered how far they had to go. It had been a long journey west, and to her, the distance back to civilized parts seemed, from here to Heaven.

            They took turns cooking the snake over the flame, then ate it with abandon. She realized they were wasting the cool part of the daylight when they could be moving, but they needed food. Afterward, they kicked out the fire, covering it in dirt and gravel. Toward dusk, the river bottlenecked. Heavy Spring rains brought the branches and trunks to bear, clogging the way in a choke point of broken wood, too treacherous to climb with the green river sliding beneath it. The girl considered for a moment whether they should attempt it, then she imagined a branch snapping, sweeping them beneath the clog. She shuddered, taking the boy by the shoulders and leading him away.

            She sat him down on a rock and motioned for him to wait. Scouting a different way, she found the going steep. Alone, she felt sure she could punch through here, but she did not want to take chances with her little brother. They were fed, but now they were stymied, and time was wasting. It seemed they were doomed to take the long way around, climb a little, then hopefully come down on the other side of the blockage, back down to the riverbank where the travel had been so easy, until today. She motioned to him and he followed her back down to the river’s edge. They got a drink, then melted back into the trees to wait out the endless night.

            She chose a spot where they could huddle beneath the scrub on the edge of the bank. She dreaded another night of mosquitoes, but they did not have to suffer them because the wind kicked up. They hunkered against one another, fending off the chill as best they could, watching as the last light gave way to savage night, when the landscape came alive. Beneath the stars, they listened to the distant howl of the coyotes, barking out black homilies in their dark tent revival. She realized she must have fallen asleep when the boy touched her cheek, one of his hands over her mouth. He was close enough to bite her nose. He looked at her wide eyed, a finger across his lips. She nodded, he moved his hand away, and they held one another. There were men’s voices in the wind, beside the river. She could not decipher the words or the language, but she did not think her people or Mexican folk would be beside the river in the dead of night. No, there was only one kind of people she knew of who moved through the land so effortlessly, impervious to the darkness. The children could do nothing save listen, frozen until the voices faded.

            When the light leaked back into the sky, she took the boy’s hand and they made their way around the choke point disappearing into the trees. Climbing higher than she hoped they would have to, they made it further downstream, bypassing a sweeping bend in the river. It would have taken them some hours to make the same distance, had they stuck to the riverbank. The more she thought about it, the river was getting too crowded anyway. She wondered if they could keep up this pace and get far enough east, back to one of the settlements they passed on their way out. If they went hill to hill, always staying with the river below them on the right, she thought they would make better time. She knew the climbs would be demanding, and they would have to find something more to eat and drink, but it seemed a better prospect than crossing paths with the Natives.

            When they had crested the next hill, she rethought the new strategy completely. No two hills were alike. The first one was pretty easy, but the second hill was nearly impassible. Once over it, she took the red-cheeked boy by the hand and led him down to get a drink, weaving between great, square blocks of rock like ancient anchors dropped from the first ship lost long before Noah released the dove. Hundreds of tiny yellow butterflies flitted amid the foliage. A shadow fell over them like a cloud blocking the sun. It was a man holding a hand axe and a dead rabbit. He was painted black and ashy white, eyes filled with astonishment.

            She grabbed at her brother’s hand so they could run, but he sat down amongst the pebbles, smiling as he had smiled in anticipation of eating the snake. More figures filled in the trail.  So instead of running away, she sat down beside her brother and kissed his forehead. He wiped it away. She felt her knife slide out from the sheath as the strangers pressed in. She knew she would scream and it would hurt, but only for a moment, before the angels gathered them up and carried them away, out of the inverted paradise. But there was no agony, and the angels did not come. Instead, the men spoke amongst themselves, gathered the children up, and carried them away.

            The people fed them dried meat in the fading light. The braves and the women regarded them reverently, as if they were tiny, wayward children of the gods, spilled down from the heavens. The boy stood up, removing his hat, and sang a song his mother had taught him.

            “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee…”

            When he finished, the group murmured to one another approvingly.

            Then, the men went off to hunt, and the women made a fire. When the night came and the moon rose the children ate with them and watched them dance.

Travis writes short stories about frontier life in Texas. Also a sci-fi writer, he just finished his first novel, East Walk. On weekends, he metal detects on a ranch in Llano County, Texas, where he and some friends are trying to substantiate a Spanish Colonial presence there during the 1700s.

Charlie was a wild mustang,
thin as a wheat stalk,
chaw-brown teeth,
skin the leather of his ancient boots,
bought when farmin’ was good,
before they up and legalized it.
Proudly flexin’ his mullet,
now streaked with grey,
and a dull-razor beard.
Most nights found him
at Dottie’s Corrral,
a place of frugal lightin’
and cigarette smog,
with a Daisy Duke waitress
who would slap your face
if you didn’t mind your manners.
Charlie sportin’ his Walmart stetson,
nursin’ his beer into the next millennium.
Cheap Ass.
Thought he was God’s Gift,
trollin’ most nights,
tryin’ to entice a woman
to his single-wide.
Seems he could only get
bony-assed chicks
in sequined jeans,
with clickin’ dentures
and blue prison tats,
perfumed by cigarettes and sage,
lipstick red as fresh blood,
poofed hair, lookin’ all the world
like Tammy Wynette on meth.
But not so bad for
the price of a couple Schlitz.
At the trailer, the coupled
like a pair of alley dogs.
Next mornin’ she wants to cuddle
like he’s her Old Man,
but all Charlie’s thinkin’ is
about changin’ the oil in the pickup
before it’s too damn hot.

Love on the free range.

Christopher Seep is an old guy whose emotional development stalled at thirteen (according to his wife). Makes for better poetry.

Diamond Dan, world champion rodeo bull, weighs 1,800 pounds and smells like the prairie after rain. He swings his black onyx head slowly from side to side in a holding pen, eyes glowing ruby red, horns polished, the tips glittering.

Diamond Dan is legend.

Cory Custer, hard-luck rodeo cowboy, weighs 155 pounds and reeks of saloon sawdust and spilled whiskey. He stares at Diamond Dan while methodically working dry rosin into his riding rope, the warmth from his hands heating the resin, making it tacky, increasing the chance he’ll be able to hold on for 8 seconds after the beast crashes out of its pen.

I used to visit Cory often, but I stopped a while back, too worried by his always-bloodshot eyes, too bored by the endless talk of how he was going to conquer “that bull.” Still, a sense of responsibility for Cory tugged at me, like when you find an abandoned puppy out among the tumbleweeds and sagebrush, wet and shivering, and you scoop it into your pickup, and drive to a friend’s ranch where, forever after, you pull up and the dog comes running all sideways, tongue flopping, tail helicoptering. You’re his Savior, so you feel obliged to say good boy and scratch behind his ears, no matter what a sloppy, drooling mess he’s become.

Cory was five-years old when I found him, six days after the Piper Cub his parents owned slammed into the side of Lonesome Mountain in the Blue Moon Wilderness on the way to a cattle auction near Bozeman. I cut short my annual elk hunt to join the search when I heard about the plane going down on my walkie talkie. No cell phones then. The crash killed his parents, leaving Cory with a broken jaw, a fear of flying, which he had so loved, and a lost feeling I don’t think he ever shook.

So, when I was passing through Pocatello and heard he was back for the rodeo, back to ride that abomination of a bull that possessed him, I figured to go watch and catch up after. Cory gave a helluva ride that day, but we never did get the chance to talk.

A gateman cranks hard on the faded leather belt wrapped ’round Diamond Dan’s back, riling him up. The gate swings wide and the bull explodes from the narrow chute, the cowboy an annoyance on his back. Diamond Dan spins left and his hind legs lift. The cowboy leans back, his head nearly touching the bull’s hindquarters.

One second.

After Cory, suddenly orphaned, left the hospital, I drove him to the Two Bar Ranch outside of Grace, Idaho, where he was raised by his Uncle Everett, Aunt Betsy, and their twins, boys 10 years older than Cory. I’d spent a summer stringing barbed wire and other odd jobs for them in younger days, and knew they were good, hardworking folk.

The boys treated Cory like a new pet. On a trip to the War Bonnet Round Up in Idaho Falls when he was 8, they entered Cory in the mutton bustin’ competition, where kids from 5- to 9-years old are plunked atop sheep to race. Cory took to it like a lamb to clover.

 As he grew, the boys, young men now, roughhoused with him, showed him how to fight, how to man up, shoe a horse. And how to ride a bull. Cory screamed the first time a bull lifted all four legs off the ground with him on its back. His cousins laughed, thinking it was just a fearful rookie’s reaction. But those fractions of a second sparked a forgotten joy in Cory, the closest he’d come to flying since the wreck.

About the same time, Sally Tallman’s mother ran off with the Pocatello Dairy Queen manager, her family’s version of a plane wreck. I was friends with her dad, Phil Tallman, from a summer we spent working on a wildfire crew together. Phil was a champion bronc buster in his day, but traded his chaps for a microphone a few decades ago after a fractured femur ended his riding days. His honey and gravel voice become a familiar one announcing the biggest events on the rodeo circuit.

The job paid well, but meant he spent more than half the year on the road, so he left Sally with family and friends for long stretches in small towns across southern Idaho and northern Utah, including with me and my wife one summer. Growing into her teens, Sally was all Wrangler jeans and Stetson hat, as skilled with a rope as she was handy with a griddle. She tolerated school, was smart but held no desire for university or the big city. She longed for a ranch of her own where she could put her long legs and strong hands to raising stock and a family.

Diamond Dan kicks his rear legs high over his head. He pushes hard off the arena’s packed dirt floor, the momentum pulling nearly two tons of bull into the air. His forelegs rise level with his heavily muscled rear quarters, ignoring gravity. On his back, the cowboy swings his right arm for balance, lets the motion pull him upright.

Two seconds.

The first time Sally noticed Cory was before her senior year in high school, hanging out with friends at makeshift rodeos on Idaho’s backroads on Saturday afternoons. She didn’t know it, but Cory searched for her in the stands each weekend. He was shy as cowboys come, though, and averted her eyes when they wandered his way.

Sally joked later that she looked right over Cory at first, being more than 6 inches taller. But one blistering hot July day at a ranch outside of Bancroft, the air brown with dust, she watched Cory hang onto one of the meanest bulls this side of the Snake River. He dismounted with a flourish, saluted her with a wave of his hat. 

Cory won $300 that day, more money than he’d ever held.

“Nice ride there, cowboy,” Sally said, when he walked past.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, looking down at his boot tips. The old broken jaw hadn’t set right, giving his speech an awkward rhythm he found embarrassing.

Sally laughed, put her hand under his chin and lifted it so he was looking into her blue eyes.

“I’m up here,” she chided.

The money Cory won in Bancroft whet his taste for serious bull riding. He joined the Pro Rodeo Circuit, dreamt of big money. Some of us tried to talk him out of it, told him success was a longshot—rodeo cowboys were lucky to make enough for booze, travel and hospital bills. He heard none of it.

And Sally’s dad didn’t want her falling for a rodeo cowboy; Phil Tallman was living proof of the strain the lifestyle puts on marriage, on family. Sally didn’t listen.

Diamond Dan snorts, snaps his head and lets fly a loop of spittle, which catches on a horn. The rider’s lungs burn as the bull’s infernal breath sears the very oxygen from the air. Like a well-versed gambler, the bull recognizes this cowboy from a small tell—the left knee grinds harder into the bull’s shoulder blade than the right one.

Three seconds.

Cory lost his shyness around Sally. He told her about the plane crash, and what few others knew, that his father had been drinking heavily before strapping Cory into a seat in the baggage area and piloting the flight. And that his mother had lived for three days in the wreckage, comforting him with stories of King Arthur and Paul Bunyan and John Henry.  

Sally was patient with Cory, watched him chaw his wild oats by rodeoing. And for a couple of years, Cory enjoyed some small success, the way younger, reckless cowboys sometimes do. In only his second year as a pro, he made good money, though never top tier.

Sally loved her cowboy, trusted his skill, never entertained fear or jealousy.

“You’re my lucky rabbit’s foot,” Cory told her after winning $15,000 at the Wyoming State Fair. He asked her to marry, made a downpayment on a shotgun shack on 40 godforsaken acres, bought a secondhand Ford pickup, and switched to Heinekens from Bud, to Makers Mark from Old Crow. Drinking helped ease the hurts rodeoing inflicted, made the stories funnier. He was a quiet drunk, never mean or violent, would just pass out on the couch or on the recliner they kept on the front porch.

He rebuilt the pickup’s engine and drove tens of thousands of miles every year chasing rodeos across the West. For a year or two, Sally rode with him to each one, but she grew bored and, besides, they needed more money that Cory was bringing home. She waitressed at a friend’s diner in the mornings, cared for a neighbor’s horses in the afternoons, and in the evenings tackled every chore from patching the roof to replacing worn-out plumbing

But after the casino opened, the neon lights beckoned like an aurora across the scrubland. Slots, poker, roulette—she played them all, lost mostly, winning just often enough to keep her going back. Cory never complained or asked her to stop. He understood all too well the thrill of chasing victory, and its cost.

All four of the beast’s cloven hooves briefly touch down and coil like a steel spring before releasing the pent-up energy and propelling Diamond Dan ever higher. The bull’s muscles uncoil, and the cowboy tightens his legs. Locked in battle, bull and rider are deaf to the roar of the crowd.

Four seconds.

Cory sported a nose shield that day, a padded strip of aluminum that brought me memories of a Viking helmet he wore one Halloween when he was eight or nine. It made Sally recall the Abilene rodeo seven months ago, when the bull’s diamond horns kissed Cory between the eyes for 75 stitches.

Over the last ten years, no cowboy has stayed astride Diamond Dan for the 8 seconds required for a cash payout. The mystery of the big bull’s origins sparked conversations in small bars from Walla Walla to Big Bend. Some claimed he was grown in a secret lab by the CIA. Others swore he was a spawn of the devil, born in the labyrinth of an African diamond mine, with real gems on the tips of his horns.

The Pocatello Round Up marked Cory’s thirteenth attempt to best the beast. The arena pulsed rodeo. A country band twanged away … kids wearing miniature cowboy hats and boots shouted and raced through the stands … manure and hay perfumed the air. Through it all, Phil Tallman delivered a steady patter of play-by-play and sales pitches.

“Don’t forget to register the young ‘uns for tomorrow’s mutton bustin’ competition! … Enjoy the beer pardners, but let a friend drive you home!”

Finally, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the event you’ve all been waiting for!” All eyes turned to the bull pens.

Midair, the bull’s front and hind legs draw together, then whip apart. The laws of physics bend as Diamond Dan rotates, the cowboy now riding a living spit. A dozen times the bull has felt this cowboy on his back, a dozen times he’s spun him off.

Five seconds.

Newcomer Jim Bob Calloway rode first, on a bull named Kalispell. He landed hard on his backside inside three seconds, jumped to his feet as the clowns chased away the bull and waved his hat at the whooping crowd, a wide, sheepish grin masking disappointment.

“He’ll be back!” Tallman said. “Give him a hand.”

Next up, veteran rider John Gooch easily hit the 8-second mark. But the beat-up, old bull he rode, Blues Brother, had seen wilder days and scored low for difficulty, leaving others a chance to pass Gooch on the leader board. And on it went, through the posse of riders.

“Are you ready for one more?” Tallman asked to a chorus of hoots and hollers. Cory gave a quick look up, raised his right arm to signal ready, and squeezed the rope with his left.

“You got this, Cory!” Sally, now 7 years his bride, shouted above the din, a few seats away from mine. How badly they needed a win. Not just for money, though they could sorely use it. Sally needed her man back, needed his attention on herself, not on a bull.

The night’s five-figure purse would pay off her current gambling debt, catch up on the three months due on the mortgage, and let her get the crib, playpen, and diaper genie out of layaway for the little wrangler she can finally feel bucking in her belly. After Cory saw the ultrasound, he swore he’d stop rodeoing—after he managed to build a nest egg for his boy; what he meant was after he beat Diamond Dan.

Diamond Dan feels the rider shift, feels the knuckles under the rope press down, the thigh muscles press the knees higher and harder on the heart girth than the bull has ever felt. He points his jaw skyward. 

Six seconds.

Cory had spent hours watching video of Diamond Dan and other bulls, from Durango to Dallas, Boise to Bakersfield. He studied the bull’s moves when drunk, sober, and somewhere in between. For three years, he had talked of little else. Tired of the endless patter, which grew more animated with every shot of whiskey, family and friends rarely invited the couple over anymore. Like I said, it’s a big reason why I stopped checking in on them.

After the last failed ride, Cory swore to Sally he spotted something on the video in the bull’s signature move, the Rotisserie Twirl. Just before Diamond Dan begins the twirl, Cory told Sally, a twitch would pulse along a muscle that runs from his neck to his hind legs. No other bull he’s watched does that.

What, he wondered, might happen if he messed with that muscle, stopped whatever signal it was sending? For the past six months he banged on bulls’ backs at auctions, studied carcasses at the slaughterhouse, rode every rodeo bull within 300 miles. He started running every morning, performed endless squats to strengthen his already thick legs.

He believed he’d cracked the secret that would tie his name to Diamond Dan’s.

As the bull spun that night, Sally watched its back and saw the shudder Cory had sworn would be there.

“Here it comes, Cory!” she hollered, her words lost in the din.

For the first time, Diamond Dan feels what humans would call doubt. He rises higher, emits a bellow that quiets the arena. The cowboy searches for a familiar face below, catches her eye, smiles for the first time in months.

Seven seconds.

Rodeo was never been about the money for Cory. It was about testing himself, man against beast. He once told me how, in the mountains after the plane crash, in those days before I found him, he listened to the wolves circling closer, felt the presence of bears. He said he stayed calm by promising his dying mother they’d make it out alive. When she finally stopped answering, he threw rocks in a blind rage at the gathering predators. He said he killed one, but truth is, I didn’t see any bodies around, beyond his parents. I think Cory was building a mythology around himself even then, like city kids become super heroes, or ranch kids think they’re Pecos Bill or Annie Oakley.

No one ever agreed on just what happened in Pocatello that day. Diamond Dan and his rider rose high above the open-air arena, climbed through the crisp, late October sky until they were out of sight.

Sally gasped.

Bob Tallman, never at a loss for words, said simply, “Will ya look at that.”

All the mutton busters smiled.

Cowboy and bull sailed over the livestock pens, above the interstate, toward the sun. Cory lay flattened against Diamond Dan’s withers, knees tight around the bull’s girth, leather chaps snapping in the wind.

The sun sparkles off the bull’s horns, catching the eye of a young girl in an airliner on its way to Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City. It’s the last siting of Diamond Dan and the rider he couldn’t shake. The cowboy’s hat flies off, rides the wind and, a few weeks later, flutters to the ground outside a Pocatello hospital where his namesake is born.

Eight seconds.

Tom Walsh, East Coast native, had the time of his life covering the rodeo for the Idaho State Journal in 1993. And that’s no bull.

1

            Drummond was hoping like hell he wouldn’t have to run the Dennison kid down. Sore as his gout was. He kept checking the picture window that looked out on Harvesting Street, half-wishing he wouldn’t even see the kid appear. He and Lindy were bellied up to the bar nursing their snifters of whiskey. Had been there an hour or more watching and waiting… and drinking.

            “Your dogs barking?” Lindy asked him.

            “How’d you know?”

            “Your face is all balled up.”

            Drummond looked up at the mirrored bar back. Lindy was right. All balled up. “Now Lindy,” Drummond said. “You know a guy of your ilk ought not worry about too much beyond the reach of his own nose.”

            “My ilk?” Lindy mused.

            “You know,” Drummond said. “Dim-witted.”

            “I know you don’t mean that.”

            “The hell I don’t.”

            “Your dogs are barking,” Lindy assured himself. “It’s making you ornery. You don’t really think I’m dim-witted.”

            Drummond snorted mid-sip. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know, in a round about way, you just called me a liar.”

            “In a round about way you are lying but, I don’t give it much credence… seeing how your dogs are barking.”

            “Never met a guy didn’t mind being lied to.”

            “Didn’t say I didn’t mind; I said I don’t give it much credence.”

            “What the hell’s the difference?”

            “We’d have to draw it out but, it’s there.”

            “Is that so?”

            “I guess it’d ring bothersome,” Lindy said. “If it was anybody else.”

            “Well I reckon I ought to feel privileged then.”

            “You ought to feel silly.”

            “On account of what?”

            “On account of me knowing you so well,” Lindy said. “You ought to know lying to me is futile.”

            Drummond grinned taken aback. “Mighty sharp word there, Lindy.”

            Lindy rooted around on his stool; a mischievous smile brimmed his cheeks. “For a dimwit,” he said.  “Wasn’t it though.”

            “‘Twas,” Drummond said.

            “Anyhow,” Lindy said. “I can always tell the difference.”

            “Betwixt what?”

            “Tween when you’re lying and when you’re not.”

            “Is that so?”

            “You just go right ahead and try me you got doubts.”

            Drummond mulled it over. “I just have the one testicle.”

            “That’s true but, hell, I already knew that.”

            “I don’t remember telling you that old story.”

            “I overheard you telling it.”

            “To who?”

            “Yellow headed whore in Bisbee. You told her you snagged your sack on a string of barbed wire when you was a boy.”

            “And you reckon she believed me?”

            “Course.”

            “Well she ought not’ve.” Drummond feigned a robust laugh. “You simple son-of-a-bitch.”

            Lindy took his hat off and flapped it on the bar. “You weren’t fibbing to that poor floozy.”

            “Course I was.”

            “I’m sure I could set here all day and not come up with the reason.”

            “Aww,” Drummond said. “She was worried about me knocking her up.”

            “And you put her mind at ease, I reckon.”

            “Told her a story’s all… I ain’t proud of it.”

            “Might be there’s a little Drummond,” Lindy said. “Running round raising cane over in Bisbee then.”

            “Wondering who is paw is, huh?” Drummond said. “God help us.”

            “Looky here,” Lindy perked up. He pointed out the Dennison kid in the bar back mirror turning the corner across Harvesting. He had a melodious stroll about him, in his spats and powder blue suit. He stopped in the shade of the colonnade to fix his derby and pose in the mercantile window. 

            “Devil may care,” Drummond said.

            “Look at that get up,” Lindy said.

            “Sporty, ain’t he,” Drummond said.

            “He looks a lot younger,” Lindy said. “Than what I had figured.”

            The kid went on out of eyeshot. They downed their dregs in a rush and hopped off of their stools. Drummond whimpered when his heels hit. He hobbled clamped-legged across the bar floor, cursing.

            “Don’t worry, Drummy,” Lindy said. “I’ll run that young buck down if need be.”

            “Don’t get ahead of yourself now,” Drummond said. “He’s slick as owl shit.”

            They tarried just outside in the alcove. Lindy latched himself against the clapboard wall, peering one-eyed around the corner. “He’s prancing around down there trying not to get them shoes dirty.”

            “Plum gall of this kid,” Drummond said. He bent over and pushed his hands down in his boots and kneaded at his bloated ankles.

            “He’s got a set on him that’s for damn sure,” Lindy knitted his brow at Drummond. “You gonna be able to keep up?”

            “Keep your eye on that slippery son-of-a-bitch,” Drummond said. “Don’t pay me no mind.” They planted their hats low and slipped out of the alcove and stalked after the kid like veiled specters clear to the end of Harvesting where sat the Metarene’s Butcher Shop. The kid turned and scuttled up the porch steps and went in.

            “Hot damn,” Lindy said. “He’s boxed in now.”

            “You go piddle on the porch,” Drummond said and the two angled off in different directions. Drummond went and shouldered the side wall in the rutted alleyway up next to the porch where the kid wouldn’t see him at the outset. They languished there for a long spell in the heat and gangrenous stench wafting up from the slaughterhouse outback. Gnats needled at his eyes and ears. His boots were dens of perpetual misgivings and choked his swollen feet. His poor jaundiced feet, itchy and feverish and given to waves of unshirted agony. He trembled and gnashed his teeth and prayed for a miraculous healing. “Oh, father god, way up there in heaven,” he blubbered, trying to recall the Lord’s Prayer. He backed up to the wall and took his hat off and fanned at the sweat legging down his face. The porch door finally cawed against the muted clack of a cowbell and so he inched up abreast of the corner and spied the kid coming out with something wrapped in butcher paper under his arm.

            Lindy clopped over and intercepted the kid at the top of the porch steps. “My goodness,” he said. “You are duded up, son.”

            The kid ambled back splay-legged, guffawing. “Much obliged, mister,” he said, blushing as he flitted his lapels.

            “Yes, sir.” Lindy squatted down with his elbows on his knees, admiring the kid’s shoes. “I believe I can see my ugly mug in them things. What is it you do for a living, son? I just gotta know.” He stood back up, pressing in nearer the kid.

            “Well,” the kid said. “A handful of things, prospecting mainly.”

            “Ain’t much panning done in these parts is it?”

            “Naw, I’m just passing through, see.”

            Lindy reached out and mashed at the butcher paper under the kid’s arm. “Parcel’s dripping.” Pink droplets cascaded from its folds and peppered the kid’s pant leg. “Damn shame too,” Lindy said, pointing out an unsightly blot leaching on one of the kid’s spats.

            “Tar-nation, mister.” The kid shook his foot out to one side, glowering at Lindy with an accusatory mien.

            “You’re still dripping,” Lindy said.

            “Oh-Blast it all to hell,” the kid brushed at the stains scattered on his upper thigh.

            “Hand that thing here,” Lindy said. He snatched the parcel from under the kid’s arm and wrung it out over the hand rail. “You get that on you it’ll rank for days.”

            “Son-of-a-bitch in there give me a watered down piece,” said the kid.

            “You reckon?” Lindy cradled the package and shirked around the kid toward the Metarene’s door, saying, “Let’s go back in there and get it straightened out by god.”

            “Naw,” the kid said, his eyes following the parcel like a hare through bramble. “Old man Metarene ain’t the type.” He reached out open handed to take the parcel back.

            Lindy offered it over and then drew it back. “Thought you was just passing through?”

            “That’s right.”

            “How is it you come to have such a trusting opinion of old man Metarene right off?”

            “Good judge of character, I reckon.”

            “Not hardly. By my surmising he’s at least three quarter bastard. Just the kind to do what you said he done.”

            “I ain’t said he done that, mister. Not him knowing he done it anyhow.”

            Lindy offered it up and drew it back again. “Are you sure cause I’ll march right in there with you and straighten that old codger out.”

            “Naw, it’s just the heat making it run so, hand it here.”

            He offered it up again and then drew it back again, saying, “Are you double dog sure?”

            “I’m sure,” the kid said, perturbed.

            Lindy proceeded to offer it up and draw it back a half a dozen more times, assuring the kid he’d go in and straighten old man Metarene out if need be.

            The kid, flabbergasted, said, finally, “Hand me that meat you old coot.”

            “Well don’t put it back under your arm,” Lindy said. “Like you done before, do it like this right here.” He held the parcel out at arms length away from the kid and pranced up and down the porch, saying, “Like this; see me, son, see me, like this right here… Cause that’s one hell of a blemish on that coverlet. I doubt if that thing’ll ever scrub clean, hope your mammy’s got some elbows on her.”

            Drummond was hugged up to the corner watching grievously, inclined to bum rush the kid but, alas his feet were too engorged beneath him now, flat enflamed.  .

            “Am I gonna have to pop you one,” the kid said to Lindy.

            Lindy froze, a grave look on his face. “Pop me one?” he said. “By pop me one do you mean?” He held his fist up. “Or do you mean?” He flapped his coat out flashing a bone handle Colt holstered against his ribs.

            “Which ever suits you,” the kid said, a little halted.

            “I don’t want no trouble, son.” Lindy slouched beseechingly with the parcel outstretched and then quick-lobbed it at the kid.

            The kid bobbled it in his hands and it fell over end to the slatted wood between them. He bent over to pick it up, saying, “Now will you kindly get the hell out of my way, mister. I got somewhere-

            Lindy had run his Colt out from under his coat and stuck it against the kid’s forehead. “Don’t you move a goddamn muscle, Jimmy Dennison,” he said. “Or I’ll flap the back of your head out like a set of French doors.”

            “You know my name,” the kid said, wide eyed.

            “I do, indeed.”

            “Well heaven and hell, mister.” He dropped the parcel and held his hands up, straight-armed, high above his head. “Don’t kill me.”

            “That’s a might too high,” Lindy said.

            “Do what?” The kid stuttered.

            “Put your hands a little lower; you trying to draw a crowd?”

            The kid lowered his hands and looked back over his shoulders at the desolate street. “Ain’t nobody seen me,” he assured Lindy. “Hell, ain’t even nobody back there is it.”

            “Save for me,” Drummond said. He reached for one of the spindles under the railing and grabbed it and leaned staggering up the side of the porch behind the kid.

            “Is that Bob Drummond I hear?” the kid said.

            Lindy grabbed the kid’s arm and spun him around and rifled his coat and pant legs and found the kid was unarmed. “You sandbagging sumbitch,” he said.

            “Figured I’d try bluffing you,” the kid said.

            “Boy, you’d have to get up early in the morning to get the jump on the likes of me.”

            Drummond turned the corner of the porch and looked up over the rail at the kid. The kid schlepped a tilted grin at him, red faced and sheepish, embarrassed. “You knowed it come to this,” Drummond said. “Sooner or later I reckon. Don’t look so peeked.”

            “You’re looking mighty pail and peeked yourself, Bob,” said the kid.

            “Well I’m getting old,” Drummond said. “Now set down.”

            The kid wheeled his head around looking the porch over. “Where abouts, Bob?” he said.

            “Right flat down on your ass,” Lindy said.

            The kid toed the parcel to one side and shook his head. “And here I am in these brand new britches, Bob,” he snipped.

            “Son,” Drummond said. “I don’t give a damn if ‘n you’re in the queen’s new pantaloons.”

            Lindy wielded the butt end of the Colt up and bopped the kid on the top of his head, saying, “Set your ass down, boy.”

            “Gripes, mister, I’m fixing to.” The kid took his derby off and rubbed at his head vigorously, widening his stance to squat.

            “Not there,” Drummond grunted. “Over here in front of me.” Drummond plopped down on the porch steps and stretched his boots out on the patted dirt.

            “You heard him,” Lindy said. He wagged the Colt, shewing the kid.

            The kid sauntered, hat in hand, down the little rise of steps. “What’s become of you, Bob?” The kid smirked. “You are panting like a stuck pig.” He hunkered down in a crouch at Drummond’s feet and then eased back gingerly onto his rear.

            Lindy kicked a plume of dust up on the kid. “Quit studying that ugly ass suit, boy.”

            The kid calmly swished the dust from his sleeves and pant tails with the brim of his derby. He looked up at Lindy with his eyes in slits. “Fuck you,” he said.

            “You sassy little son-of-a-bitch.” Lindy cocked his fist to give the kid another bop.

            “Lindy,” Drummond snapped. “Will you kindly quit that shit. So goddamn punchy all of a sudden.” He shoved a boot out toward the kid. “Jimmy pull that boot off for me will you.”

            “Sure thing, Bob.” The kid popped his derby back on and took hold of Drummond’s boot and wrenched at it. “I know I got some glaring faults,” he said. “But this old boy ain’t never been above helping out his fellow man, specially one as humble and well meaning as yourself, Bob.” Drummond whimpered and bleated and cursed through his teeth until the boot slid off.

            “God almighty damn, Drummy,” Lindy said. “That foot of yours looks like a whooped ass.”

            Lindy’s approximating tickled the kid. He took his derby off and hid his buck teeth with it while he laughed. “A whooped ass,” he hacked. “That’s just what it looks like too.”

            Lindy pursed his lips like he was trying not to smile, and glared back up the street with a constipated look on his face. “Why hell, Lindy,” Drummond said. “You’re just a regular cut up  ain’t you… You chuckle headed sum-bitch… And you Dennison, you ain’t got sense enough to know you’re in your last days, son.” He shoved his other boot out at the kid. “Now, git this other one.”

            The kid looked up at Drummond, chagrined now, and took hold of the boot and wriggled it off. “I know I got some glaring faults but not helping a man in need ain’t one of them. Sure wish you’d make it your business to remember that about me.”

            Drummond sighed. He stretched his feet out astride the kid and spread his toes and took in the cool dampness of the shaded dirt. He felt like a weakling, a husk of his natural self. He peered up Harvesting Street and grieved at the onerous distance betwixt where he sat and the stockyards. He looked up at Lindy. “Hand me that scribe,” he said.

            “Where’s yourn,” said Lindy.

            “In the tumbleweed,” he said. “Way down yonder.”

            “Well, hell, go get it.”

            “On two whooped asses?”

            “You mean to tell me you can’t walk back after you done walked down here.”

            “I’m sore and enflamed twice what I was and getting worse by and by. I think it was that rot gut’s what kicked it off.”

            “Well I’ll go get it for you then I reckon.”

            “Well, good,” Drummond said sarcastically. “And while you’re at it won’t you bring the jail and them two gaunt mules pulling it.”

            “Good thinking,” Lindy groused and scratched himself. “But that’d leave you here with him and no pistol.”

            “You don’t say,” Drummond said.

            “Why hell,” the kid said. “I’ll just mosey along with him then.”

            “You ain’t going no place,” Drummond said.

            “Damn conundrum,” Lindy said. “I’ll just leave you with mine then I reckon.”

            “Good thinking, Lindy.” Drummond took the Colt and trained it on the kid. “Real insightful of you,” he said. The kid giggled and Lindy kicked dust up on him again.

            “That’s real heroic, mister,” the kid said. “Kicking dirt up on a man what can’t defend hisself.”

            “Ain’t but two men here among us,” Lindy muttered as he passed behind the kid.

            Drummond watched the kid glaring at Lindy’s backside traipsing away. “You gonna lock me in that tumbleweed ain’t you,” the kid said.

            “How much you pay for that get up, Jimmy,” Drummond said, ignoring the kid’s question.

            “I smell rain,” the kid said, ignoring Drummond’s question. “This place’ll be a treacherous bog before sundown.” He knocked his feet against the bottom step between Drummond’s legs.

            “You ain’t gotta worry about getting them shoes muddy, Jimmy. You’ll be locked in that tumbleweed.”

            “Good. I thought for sure you’d make me walk it back to Eustus,” the kid said. He ticked his head to one side, quiet for a moment. “Truth be told, Bob, I stole this get up.”

            Drummond shook his head, laughing. “Now why in hell’s half acre would you tell me that.”

            “I don’t rightly know, Bob.” The kid’s eyes welled up. He slunk his face down at the hard panned dirt between his legs. “It was an old man,” he said. “On his death bed not two miles from here. I slid through his window early this morning and took it.”

            “Well ain’t no need in crying about it now, son.” The kid’s shoulders began bouncing out pitiful sounding whimpers. “Aww, hell, now Jimmy, I hope you ain’t trying to buy no sympathy off of me.”

            “Something’s got a hold of me, Bob.”

            “You reckon?”

            “Something god awful and mischievous, Bob.”

            “Yeah, I believe you’re right,” Drummond said. “A rash case of the sheer dumb-asses.”

            “And I just can’t get a handle on it.”

            “And here you are liable to hang for it.”

            “For stealing,” the kid said.

            “That among a slew of transgressions, Jimmy,” Drummond said.

            The kid ran his sleeve over his eyes, sniffling. “A pastime old as man hisself.”

            “I ain’t matching wits with you, Jimmy… I got one objective here.”

            “To see me hang I reckon.”

            “Not hardly,” Drummond said. “To lock your stupefying ass in that tumbleweed and then hunt me up a doctor to lance these god forsaken feet of mine, preferably one with dainty hands.”

            The butcher’s door screeched open and a man in a bloody apron limped out on the porch. He had a black stogie rooted in one jaw. “Howdy, Bob,” the butcher said.

            “Metarene,” Drummond said.

            The butcher frowned down at the parcel there on the slats and then at the kid. The kid glanced up furtively, ashamedly so. “Mr. Metarene,” he said. “It appears I won’t be returning to pay you for your kindness.”

            “Don’t fret, I didn’t expect you back.” The butcher mocked the kid, sipping at his cigar daintily with his pinkie raised. “Highfalutin, my ass.” He reared a leg and kicked the parcel down the steps. “Ain’t nothing but hocks and gristle in there anyhow,” said the butcher. “I ain’t your mark, boy.” He hocked a gob of amber spit out over the rail and turned and went back in.

            The kid ruminated silently over the parcel sitting there in the dirt beside him. “I’m so goddamn foolish,” he said. He buried his face in the cup of his derby and sobbed.

            Drummond pitied the kid somewhat; feral, lonesome, and maladjusted as he was. “Hell, I ought to be the one crying, Jimmy,” He said. “Bad as these nubbins hurt.”

            The kid blabbed something indiscernible into the breach of his hat.

            “You know,” Drummond said, reaching to razz the kid’s knee. “Lindy was right that Metarene really is a near perfect specimen of undiluted cocksucker ain’t he… and smells worst than a shit house rag.”

            Muffled hacks of laughter cut through the kid’s wailing. He put his derby back on and raked his weepy eyes and cheeks with his sleeve again. Sulking and laughing by turns. “Tell me, Bob, how much they got on my head.”

            “Just enough,” Drummond said. “You know, Jimmy, shooting Hanover’s horse was your misstep. Scaring the bejesus out of them nuns not withstanding. The stealing was the least of it truth be told.”

            “Giving the sisters what for give me angst, honest it did. The whole thing got whipped up quicker than what I had figured.”

            “They forgive you I’m sure, them being bound to such notions.”

            “But, the sheriff’s ninny,” the kid said, nodding his head resolutely. “I don’t give a damn for, him trying to run me over like he done. It was either that or get trampled underfoot. What would you’d done, Bob?”

            Drummond leaned back and put his elbows on the steps. “I wouldn’t have run into a passenger car full on nuns and hard legs whilst it was moored at the depot.”

            “It was a pickle,” the kid said. He took his hat off and drummed it on his knee. “Got out of it though didn’t I.”

            “That you did. It was a feat to behold.”

            “Was he sore about it,” the kid asked, starry-eyed.

            “Who, Hanover?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Sore ain’t the word,” Drummond said. “He was plum devastated.”

            “About that ninny,” said the kid.

            “About that ninny,” said Drummond. “You woulda thought you’d shot one of his kids.” The two snickered at one another like school boys.

            “Tell me, Bob,” the kid said. “How much was that poor ninny worth to him? How much he put on this old boy’s head?”

            Drummond looked the kid over, pitying every inch of his skinny misguided soul. “Five hundred,” he muttered.

            “Five hundred,” the kid scoffed. “Is that all? Hell I got four times that stowed away.”

            “Is that so?”

            “It is,” the kid said. “And wouldn’t bat an eye at giving you ever last dollar.”

            “Is that so?”

            “Ever jot and tittle, yes sir. Wouldn’t mind it one bit.”

2

            Lindy was sitting high up on the buckboard seat mewing at the mules as they wagged and pulled the wagon back up the street. He jeered them into the alleyway next to the Metarene and stopped so that the jail was jutted out a little ways from the porch. He got down off the wagon and came up along the eve of the porch with his thumbs hung in his waistline. “Wormy gris and Bahia grass,” he said and flung one of the thumbs back at the mules. “That’s all them poor sumbitches have had.”

            “They get watered,” Drummond said.

            “Yeah I reckon.” Lindy fished a key from his coat pocket and jiggered it in the jail door. “And them in a stall no wider than that.” He turned around with his hands outstretched, the jail door yawning behind him.

            Drummond did not reply.

            “Just thought you’d want to know how we got bent over on that deal is all,” Lindy said.

            “Alright Jimmy,” Drummond tilted his head toward the wagon. “Load up.”

            “You gonna talk to him about it ain’t you, Bob?” The kid stood up, brushing the dust from his backside. Drummond held the pistol on him.

            “Talk to who about what,” Lindy said.

            “We’ll have us a talking,” Drummond said. “Once you’re in that tumbleweed.”

            “Talk to who about what,” Lindy said again.

            “Me and Bob been chewing the fat a bit,” the kid said as he moped over to the rear of the wagon.

            Lindy was standing there with his arm propped up on the canted jail door, eyeing the kid closely. “Is that a fact,” He said. “Well chew on this, get your ass in that jail, boy.”

            The kid took hold of the sidebar and planted one foot askance on the door jam and pulled up awkwardly. He strained and tussled, bending this way and that, trying to avoid grinding his slacks against the soiled floorboards. “I’ll be a sumbitch,” Lindy huffed. He hooked one of the kid’s belt loops with his forefinger and jerked him up over the floorboards and then pushed him.

            “Gripes,” the kid said, flailing. 

            Lindy clanged the jail door to behind the kid, saying, “Be here all goddamn day waiting on you, boy.”

            “Don’t lock it,” Drummond said. He got up with a moan that whiffed from his chest like mashed bellows. “I’m fixing to lay down back there.”

            “Do what,” Lindy said.

            “You heard me,” Drummond said. He shuffled pensively on his bare feet across the front of the porch, using the spindles to steady himself again.

            “I reckon you two did get chummy didn’t you,” Lindy said. “You forgetting your boots.”

            “To hell with them,” Drummond said. He handed Lindy his Colt back and then bent over with his belly against the floorboards and wallowed on his elbows into the jail. He rolled over onto his back and lay there panting and sweating.

            The kid squatted down beside him, looking him over. “You let me know if there’s anything I can do … anything at all.”

            “He don’t need no help from you, Jimmy,” Lindy said.

            “Much obliged, Jimmy,” Drummond said.

            Lindy closed and locked the jail door. Whipping his head and arms around angrily. He went and gathered Drummond’s boots up and toted them back to the wagon and fed them one after the other through the bars in the jail door. “Now tell me about this fat y’all been chewing,” he said. He came up the side of the wagon and grabbed onto the bars next to Drummond’s head, waiting.

            “Well,” Drummond said, winging his arms up to nest his head in a sling of braided fingers. “Jimmy here was figuring on bribing us off.”

            “Naturally,” Lindy said.

            “Well, now wait a minute, Bob,” the kid said. “You ain’t gotta drag it out in such an unfavorable light.”

            “Ain’t no way to dress up bribery, Jimmy,” Drummond said. “Not that it makes one necessarily apposed to it either.”

            Lindy turned and put his shoulder against the bars, peering up the alleyway like he was mulling things over.  “If you mean to ask me to weigh in on the matter, Drummy, I say shit naw… no,” he said. He pushed off of the bars and walked up toward the front of the wagon.

            “Don’t you want to know how much he’s offering,” Drummond called out. He rolled over on his elbow and looked back through the bars at Lindy.

            Lindy stood still with one foot already up on the step side for a long contemplative moment and then put his foot back down on the ground, saying, “I reckon it’s a bundle.”

            “Twenty-five hundred,” the kid said, craning his head around to see Lindy. “Giver take a dollar or two. Stowed away with your name written all over it.”

            Lindy sidled back up to the bars. “Stowed away,” he said. “Where abouts?”

            “Buried off the roadside not two miles from here,” the kid said. “As the crow flies.”

            “As the crow flies,” Lindy said, looking down at Drummond. “I believe he’s plumb full of shit.”

            “You heard Hanover yourself,” Drummond said. “Kid cleared nearly three times that in that Eustus deal.” He and Lindy glared at one another knowingly.

            “Well, hell, Jimmy,” Lindy said. “By all means, holler out the way.”

3

            The kid led them to the outskirts of town where two trails converged, one was the way to Eustus and the other was an overgrown tunnel of privet scarcely wide enough for the mules to pass through.

            “Don’t worry,” the kid said. “It opens up back in here.”

            “Well just so you know, Jimmy,” Lindy said. “You get us hung up out here I’m gonna whoop you nine different ways and string you up myself.”

            “This trail loops right back to town don’t worry it opens up.”

            Drummond lay there watching the branches of privet tinking along the jail bars and by and by the road did open up and tended back toward the direction of town just as the kid said it would. They passed a smokehouse and a dilapidated shack where two kids were chasing each other in and out of the tree line at the edge of their little yard. Drummond smiled and watched them as long as his supine position on the wagon floor would allow.

            “There’s another house,” the kid said. “Just up here, folks boil cain mash down for saccharine, you know. Loot ain’t a hundred paces down from them.”

            There was an elderly couple sitting on crate barrels in the yard shelling peas and a younger man in rags, sooted head to toe, stoking a fire on which was roosted a large iron cauldron. As they crossed the corner of the yard the old man began grinning fiendishly. He slapped his knee and yipped through the breach of his cupped hands at the younger man and then pointed out their passing wagon. The younger man stood up straight and stone-still, staring like a spooked animal. He waved and yelled out, “Ho now law man, ho.” And so Lindy jerked back on the reins and they stopped there at the edge of the yard. The man ran over and picked up a slat bucket next the house and then went and scooped it down in the cauldron and brought it up brimming with the scalding molasses.

            “What’s he wanting,” Drummond hollered up at Lindy.

            “Trying to sell some of that molasses I reckon,” Lindy said.

            “Tell him we ain’t interested,” Drummond said.

            “He’s done here now,” Lindy said. “You tell him.”

            The man came up to the edge of the yard in a rush with the bucket cocked in his hands. Drummond rolled up on his elbow and shewed at the man through the bars, saying, “We ain’t interested.”

            The young man’s lips wavered up atop a set of jagged purpled teeth. He stepped up to within spitting distance of the jail and swung the bucket back. “Go to hell and burn you liver gutted criminals!” he said. He brought the bucket forth in one whipped motion, launching its contents in through the bars at Drummond and the kid.

            “Bob!” the kid yelped. He dove head long toward the tail end of the jail.

            Drummond reared up and then back but was unable, in that instant, to maneuver himself out of harm’s way. He watched helplessly as the molten sludge split through the bars and lashed down on his neck and chest and arms. Tongues of untempered hellfire. He sat up with a start wailing and yipping and moaning and praying and cursing. “My god Jesus oh my god…” He grabbed his shirt front and ripped it lengthwise along his torso, exposing scarlet skin that had already begun to bubble with blisters and boils. The young man with the bucket was standing at the bars watching Drummond’s plight jubilantly, hawing out peels of craggy laughter twice as grating as the bays of a donkey, as was the old man in the yard. The old woman had come up to the edge of the road with her palms turned up toward the sky, singing some derelict and lisp ridden hymn. 

            Lindy jumped down off of the buckboards and rushed up the side of the wagon and walloped the man on the side of his head and the man collapsed there on the road, snoring. “What have you done you ignorant sons-a-bitches” he hollered back across the yard at the old man. He turned and pushed the old woman and she fell over laughing.

            Drummond was wreathed in an ungodly pain that would not subside. He wallowed and seized. “Lindy,” he called out. “Get me out of here, get some water. Do something goddamnit.”

            The kid was balled up in the corner, tucked in clear of Drummond’s flailing legs. “Jimmy,” Drummond said. “Help me out of this coat, Help me up… oh goddamn it, lord in heaven what the fuck has just happened.”

            The kid crawled around behind Drummond and grabbed the nape of his coat and shirt and peeled them down to the crooks of his elbows. Drummond could feel pockets of blistered flesh distending and rubbing underneath his chin. He trembled violently and wavered into a spell of blurred revelry and when he came to Lindy was there at the mouth of the jail pulling him forward by the hems of his trousers. The kid was hunched behind him pushing on his back. When they had gotten him to the edge of the floorboards Drummond hollered out, “Water! Lindy! Get me water! Goddamnit!”

            Lindy left Drummond’s legs there dangling off the side of the wagon and went and grabbed the slat-bucket and took off in a dead run toward the elderly man in the yard. “Won’t you just lay back,” the kid said softly at Drummond’s ear. He eased Drummond onto his back. “You just take it easy now,” the kid whispered. “Nice and easy.”

            And Drummond put his head back and lay there racked in pain, looking up at the blanched firmament through the rusted tines above him. He could hear the kid rustling about around him, mumbling something sultry and smooth. The sky was a tepid blue leaching down through the overcasts. A powder blue that brought to mind the kid’s stolen suit. “Thank you, Jimmy,” Drummond muttered. “For helping me. I won’t soon forget it… You hear me Jimmy?… Jimmy?” He could hear Lindy bellowing and cursing at the kid and the sound of his boot heels padding out across the soapstone yard. Drummond pushed up on his elbows and saw that the kid was already a mere bead of powder-blue elbows and coat tails skittering away and away and away, free as the unfettered wind.

            Lindy ran out behind the wagon and leveled his Colt back up the road and was just before firing when Drummond remembered the kids who’d been chasing one another in and out of the tree line in the little shack yard with the smokehouse. “Don’t, Lindy,” he hollered. “Them kids up there playing.” Drummond pulled up and collapsed against the barred door frame and watched helplessly as the kid became a sliver against the bend in the road and then disappear.

Philip Graves is a father of three from Columbia, MS. He owns and operates a secondhand/flea market called The Cornerstore.

All alone in a lifetime
of series of poor, cheap
computers trying to tell my
story at about the same cost.

The cowboy looking down at
his boots, realizing they’re not
Tony Llamas or even real leather
but simply something that held together.

Had only his life simply been so like
that. Yet while it lasted, held together
by a dream or dreams…of course
never coming true but truly because
a dream is a dream, it can’t become real
hence then contradicting the meaning
of a dream by becoming a reality.

Gone from the days of hitchhiking
to “LA …” or “San Fran or bust!”
and somehow parlaying that mentality
into the digital age of virtual transportation
for like cheap, low cost, or no cost
escapism—everything from and to–
places never to be seen except on
the screen, he stuck his harpoon
into some kind of internet virtual
animal, brought it home, cared for it,
honed it…

Until one day the landlord broke down
the apartment door with the police
and put that hound out of business
once and for evermore.

V. William Barrett was raised in the American West. He attended Boise State University and received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, just short of Edward Abbey’s departure. He is the author of Greater Than a Tourist: the American West, a guide.

Description: Bound pages; dated November 5th, 1908, with title: How I Came to Rob the Bank in Montpelier by Butch Cassidy. “Chapter One: In Which Matt Warner’s Most Curious Affliction, That of Being Haunted by The Old Prince of Darkness, Satan Himself, Is Relayed in Order to Account for The Amputation of His Wife’s Leg.”

Excavators Note: This remarkable, if bizarre, passage constitutes the only known attempt at an autobiography written by the infamous outlaw Butch Cassidy. Footnotes have been added to provide the context that Cassidy neglects. The rest is unaltered.

I like the story of robbing that bank. I’m not too interested in much of anything that came before. You can read about most of all that in the papers, and what you can’t isn’t worth reading. No, if I’m going to put pen to paper for anything, it’ll be the Montpelier job. For one, those were the good old days to be sure, but more importantly, it’s about old Matt Warner, who I see now got it right by going straight.^[1]

Things have gone bad again. Worse than before actually, and I’m thinking that we’ll likely have to give up soon.^[2]So then, when else, but on the eve of my own personal apocalypse, am I going to set any part of myself down in ink for posterity’s sake? It’s now or never.

But where to start? Well, I suppose there’s a number of good beginnings, from when I first met Matt at the races^[3] to that spot of green in Dry Fork,^[4] but no. It’s best to lead with how Rosa Warner lost her leg, seeing how it’ll be important later, but there isn’t really any good place to tell it except right up front.

To do that bit any justice at all though, you’ll need to know at the outset that unbeknownst everyone else, the Devil himself stalked Matt everywhere he went and always had since the night their paths first crossed. He confessed this to me alone on a cloud dabbled night in Brown’s Hole when all our fellow scoundrels lied in fitful sleep, plagued by the nightmares we earned. The ones Matt and I were up to put off.

“There,” he gestured into the abyss beyond the ember glow. “A serpent the color of lightning. Strutting about like a lion born of brimstone. Angel of light. Deceiver.”

I stared hard where he pointed. I about half fooled myself into thinking I saw the faintest shadow, a darkness in the dark, but I didn’t say nothing of it. There was cool mountain night between us, and the river hummed that it was the hour for me to listen.

Matt breathed out ghosts as he spoke, and he timed each tortured sniff to take cover beneath the fire pops. No one had ever accused him of being an honest man, but that night, I could’ve been the first.

“I was fifteen. Still using the name my mamas knew me by.^[5] I was working graveyard hours for Old Jim at Diamond Mountain for the summer. It’d been quiet most every night but then this Mexican come in. Boy, did he scare Jesus out of me. We exchanged lead back and forth. Think I soiled myself, I was so afraid, but I don’t remember for sure. Finally, I shot him down.^[6] Grease-black hair smeared with maroon blood. The hay-filthy floor. Reeking geldings all unsettled and whining something fierce. And him. Just out of nowhere, like he’d always been there really, Satan appeared, and that old Father of Lies never left.”

“What is it?” I asked, and I followed his eyes to where he’d said the Beast lurked.

“He’s talking to me. I try to ignore him, but it’s not always so easy.”

“What’s he saying?”

“It’s ironic. Me killing a horse thief is ironic, and he says… he says he bets I wish some kid would do the same to me. He says, I could do it myself if I weren’t so yellow-bellied. I should kill myself, he’s saying, over and over. Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself.”

Matt had been living with the Devil talking in his ear like that for ten years when he met sweet Rosa Rumel, the prettiest girl in Afton, Wyoming. He was as handsome as he’d ever be then. Sandy curls and a wiry smile. And seeing as he’d recently made a pretty penny too, he was soon a suitor in her father’s house.^[7] Rosa’s cheeks warmed with girlish daydreams about our Matty, while the Devil eyed her blossoming figure and listed every sin he could inflict on her.

One September morning, Matt swept her up, and they headed to the chapel in Montpelier, just a hop and a skip across the state line into Idaho. They honeymooned one night on a Bear Lake beach, then the trail called Matt back. There was some of the old fun to be had yet. Banks were flush with gold-rushed coin notes. Rivers of fire ran wet at racket dances. Sunset after sunset ached for taking a flyer, giving a green gown, blowing the grounsils, and amorous congress. But as I’ve since learned, there’s only so long brass can shine before it blackens.

The job in Delta went all to hell. Good friends were buried, and finally, at Rosa’s relentless urging, Matt straightened up.^[8] He traded Old Jim a saddle and a sturdy horse for the rights to Diamond Mountain. The old man rode off into the desert alone for the obvious reason. Matt, Rosa, Sweet Baby Joy,^[9] and the Devil settled into a quiet life.

Now about Rosa’s leg. Well, you see, before I can go on, you’ll be needing to know that in all the years that I knew Matt, I never heard him tell the same story the same way twice. So, figuring out the truth behind Rosa’s amputation takes work. Hold each version up to the light, and you may still not have the foggiest idea of how it really went.

For example, it was well known that Matt was quick and severe to anger.^[10] Satan’s lying tongue stirred a rage in Matt. And as it goes in one telling of the whole affair, the Serpent’s fury possessed Old Matt one day, and he thrashed a stubborn mustang with all of Hell’s wickedness flooding his mind. Kind Rosa rushed to stop him.

“You want to take the beast’s side, huh?” Matt repeated Satan’s hiss. In a tussle of tears, he fastened her ankle to the mad creature’s tail and sent it galloping.

But that’s just one telling. See, the Devils’ way of torturing Matt wasn’t all evils. In fact, Lucifer would often whip Matt up in a frenzy of ecstasy. Filling his head with glee until he felt invincible.^[11] It’s been suggested that one fireside night, Matt was drunk on the Devil’s charm. He danced about, making Rosa giggle. Then, aiming to plop down on her lap, he crashed onto her knee.  Her feet were up, and his weight snapped her leg clean in half.

Then again, the worst was Satan’s silence. The Devil would give Matt the cold shoulder for weeks or even months, and Matt would fall into the depths of unbearable downheartedness.^[12] He wouldn’t rise from bed nor speak but to weep. Rosa would be tasked with all of everything when he got like that. In another version, she was out one blustery day, cursing her inconsolable husband and chopping ice to water the cows. She slipped, and her leg plum broke.

I heard Matt confirm each of these stories in the same breath that he denied them. After saying farewell to the poor fellow for the last time, just before Sundance and I headed East, I went to Fort Duchesne to ask the surgeon who took that leg. He said it was cancer. So, who knows what happened.^[13] But the fact is, after the mess with the sawbones was done, my friend realized two things that frightened him to his core. For one, somehow, he’d come to really love his wife and was certain to be lost without her. And second, he needed more money to support them and the baby on the way then what honest work could pay. So the Devil’s eyes lit bright as fire when his ilk, E.B. Coleman, crossed the barroom floor with his wicked proposition.^[14]

END

---

[1] Warner was elected Justice of the Peace in Carbon County, Utah in 1904 and later became deputy sheriff. On December 21, 1938, he died a respected lawman. He was seventy-two years old.

[2] Cassidy shot himself near San Vicente, Bolivia on November 7, 1908. His body was found with that of Henry Longabaugh, who was apparently shot by Cassidy through the left eye. Longabaugh, also known as the Sundance Kid, had been Cassidy’s principal partner in crime since Cassidy and Warner said their final goodbyes late in 1899.

[3] In 1888, Cassidy, having fled Utah as a wanted horse thief, worked the mines near Telluride, Colorado where he met Warner, a cattle rustler in unlawful possession of the area’s fastest horse. The two were fast friends. Soon, Warner introduced Cassidy to the notorious gang leader Tom McCarty and the outlaw life. Warner claimed to have “taught Butch Cassidy everything he knew about bank robbing.” The truth to that is debated, but Warner is credited with giving Cassidy his nickname after an incident involving Warner’s revolver, “Butch.”

[4] Dry Fork Canyon is located ten miles north of Vernal, Utah in the Uinta Mountains. In 1896, a rumor of a possible copper deposit in the canyon spurred two parties to investigate. E.B. Coleman of Salt Lake City set out, closely followed by the brothers Ike and Dick Staunton and David Milton of Vernal.

[5] The first son of his father’s fifth wife, Warner was born on April 12, 1864, and was baptized as Willard Christiansen. His father had moved to Vernal after converting to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1853. This is the genesis of Warner’s nickname, “Mormon Kid,” the name that Coleman knew him by when they met at the Vernal saloon on May 6,1896.

[6] Diamond Mountain Ranch is twenty miles north of Vernal and thirty-five miles east of Dry Fork Canyon as the crow flies. In 1879, Jim Warren employed Warner as a night guard. The would-be horse thief was Warner’s first kill, but he was far from the last. Seventeen years later, Warner agreed to Coleman’s offer of $500 to murder Coleman’s three competitors camping in Dry Fork.

[7] By summer of 1889, having robbed banks in Denver and Telluride, Warner accrued a fortune of $31,500, worth $1,044,666 in 2023.

[8] On September 7, 1893, the McCarty Gang attempted to rob the bank in Delta, Colorado. The ring of Tom’s revolver felling the teller drew the attention of local attorney Ray Simpson, who shot and killed Tom’s brothers Bill and Fred as the bandits tried to escape. McCarty disappeared soon thereafter. The riders of the Outlaw Trail were adrift, leaderless, for three chaotic years.

[9] Joyce Warner was the daughter of Matt and Rosa. “A consequence of that green gown,” Cassidy wrote. In 1938, before her father’s death, she edited and published his autobiography Last of the Bandit Riders… Revisited.

[10] “Take your medicine, you dirty sons of bitches!” Warner was reported to have said as the gun fight ensued on the morning of May 7, 1896. Ike killed Warner’s horse first, then Dave Milton was fatally shot in the spine by Warner while still sleeping in his tent. Dick was discovered quickly bleeding out from three wounds after the fighting stopped. Warner also shot Ike’s nose off.

[11] Warner was as infamous for his temper as for his inclination to revelry. When the shooting stopped that morning in Dry Fork, it was quickly discovered that Warner and his victims knew each other, having all grown up together in Vernal.

[12] Warner turned himself in for the killings in Dry Fork. On August 13, 1896, after Warner refused to be broken out, Cassidy robbed the bank in Montpelier of $7,165 to pay Warner’s bail. The robbery launched Cassidy’s career as an outlaw gang leader, but Warner turned down the offer.

[13] Rosa died of cancer shortly after the birth of a son in 1897. Warner was let out on supervised release to attend the funeral and spend the day with his child. He served three years of his five-year sentence. The boy didn’t live to see his father again.

[14] Cassidy wrote separately, “I read my bit about Matt to Sundance. His eyes found a great distance in the candle flame, then he started telling me about some book, Flatland by Edwin Abbott. It’s the story of a square meeting a sphere, like a ball. The square was two-dimensional, and so it had a one-dimensional perspective. This made the sphere look like a line that expanded and contracted as it crossed the square’s vision. Sundance paused. I think he thought I might ask him something, but I didn’t. He squinted and cocked his head. Humans, he went on, are four-dimensional creatures, living in time, and so we have a three-dimensional perspective. Don’t you wonder then if a five-dimensional being, a being outside of time, wouldn’t appear omnipresent? Someone’s coming.”

Andrew S. Fish is a hobby-writer from Ames, Iowa. He previously lived in Denver and traveled extensively in the American West. He taught History and Literature for the first half of his career. He prefers to write at the intersection of historical fiction and fantasy. He lives with bipolar disorder.

In her prime, which wasn’t long
due to the corrosive effects of drink,
Calamity Jane, born Marthy or
Martha Canary, was equal in celebrity
to Wild Bill Hickock and George
Armstrong Custer. Some oldsters
still think of her as the sunny blonde
tomboy as portrayed in the movies.
A songbird, warbling of her secret
love. In truth, self-named Calamity
Jane was a rough itinerant blessed
with the uncanny ability to pump up
her exploits, real and imagined, to
all who would listen.

Well, this much is true: Calamity Jane
came by her buckskins honestly.
Born into poverty in Missouri in 1852,
oldest child, she never did cotton
to women’s role, which was far
too dull for her spirited nature.
She could ride and hunt, fish
and swear with the best of the
boys. (It’s true that oldest
daughters sometimes become
sons.) Her skills being practical,
her father did not discourage her.
Deeply in debt due to gambling,
he plucked up his family and headed
west.

Their luck wasn’t good. In Virginia
City, Montana, Martha’s mother, said
by some to be a harridan, succumbed
to pneumonia. Still seeking that elusive
success, her father died a short while
later in Mormon Territory, leaving
15-year-old Martha to raise herself
and five younger ones. With scant
support—cook, dishwasher, dance hall
girl, mule driver, sometime prostitute,
she couldn’t, so the siblings were
farmed off as orphans and
vanished from history.

Somewhere along her trajectory,
Martha Canary renamed herself
Calamity Jane. Some said the name
was a warning: any man who crossed
her was courting calamity. Calamity
herself claimed that the name was
given her by a soldier, Egan, she had
saved from the Indians. Either way it
was a brilliant stroke of invention,
tripping on the tongue. Perhaps
Calamity might have rivaled Twain,
if she hadn’t been illiterate.

As her story continues, Calamity
eked out a living at Fort Bridger and
then Fort Laramie in Wyoming. In
1875, she dressed as a soldier and
joined a government expedition.
The point of that journey was to
determine just how much gold
the Black Hills held. A minor
detail: by right of the Treaty of
Laramie, the Sioux owned the
land. In her defense, Calamity
cared not a whit for gold or any
other metal, precious or base.
She didn’t covet; her motive was
pure: adventure.

She must have had a grand time
on the march, in the wild. Wolves
snakes, storms, floods, were never
known to deter her. But when the
army brass discovered she was
female, she was ordered to leave.
Not that her sex was a secret. She
just felt freer in pants.

Calamity being Calamity, she didn’t go
far. Adept at cracking a 17-foot whip,
tall and strong, she became mule-
skinner of a supply wagon further
down the line. About a year later, in
spring 1876, she rode out as a
bullwhacker with General Crook’s
expedition to Montana to “subdue”
the Sioux. Again, Calamity was
discovered dressed as a man
and ordered to leave. This time
she did, despite her later claims.
She never saw any battles between
red man and white. Just as well.
What had Crazy Horse ever done
to her?

After she moved to Cheyenne a few
months later, it is said by some that
she found work in a low-grade bordello
known as a hog ranch. This may be
true. She wouldn’t be the first strong-
willed woman to sell herself to men.
Unsavory as it seems, fornicating
for money in low surroundings was
better than starving, and there was,
is, always a market. Or maybe she
did work as a cook. Accounts vary,
depending, perhaps, on the writer’s
agenda. The more salacious
highlight the whoring, while others
don’t.

Safe to say, Calamity Jane preferred
men’s work to lolling around in
low dives. It was more dignified.
Adventure again beckoning in 1876,
she set out for the goldrush town
of Deadwood, Dakota Territory,
stringing along with Wild Bill Hickock.
Like his, her arrival was headline news.
Even though she never met a barstool
she didn’t like and howled through
the streets like a coyote when drunk,
people sought her company because
she was generous when she had
money and for the stories she
could tell.

It was in Deadwood, Dakota Territory,
during its goldrush days that Calamity
Jane burnished her fame. By nature, she
was Coyote, a trickster, as the Natives
say. Despite her hardships or because of
them, she could enthrall. Whether she
spoke the strict truth was beside the
point. She never rode with Custer in
Arizona as she claimed. (Custer never
rode in Arizona). Nor rescued wagon
trains from marauding Sioux. Nor, for
that matter, had a love affair with
Wild Bill, who favored rich, painted
widows, while Jane was buckskin plain.

Egged on by everyone, including
gentlemen of the press, she spun
yarns based on what she wished she
had done. At a time of corsets and lace,
fainting ladies and smelling salts,
there was a surefire market for tales
of wild women, those who broke
the mold. Go figure: a thrilling release
for all the folks stuck back East
in clapboard houses and tenements,
even mansions perhaps. Like
“The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance,” legend became reality.

There is a photo of Calamity clad
in buckskins and holding a rifle.
She doesn’t look happy, exactly.
In fact, in most of her photos, be it in
buckskins or skirts, she looks
hard, sad, and lonely, the bottle
beckoning, endless horizon
in her eyes. It’s hard work being
a legend, the life of the party.

Yet she had a good heart. When a
smallpox epidemic hit Deadwood
in August of ‘76, all accounts agree
that she tended the sick uncomplainingly,
and at great risk to herself.

As news of Calamity spread, dime novel
scribes profited off her exploits, real
and imagined, while she, ever at home
in a saloon, drank up whatever fame
earned her. Never able to settle
down for long, she followed her
itch from the Dakotas to Wyoming to
Montana as far west as Missoula and
back. What she was searching for, God
only knows. Sobriety? As she traveled,
she sold photos of herself and
pamphlets presenting a brief story of
her life: fiction interlaced with fact.
She even appeared at the Pan American
Exposition back East in Buffalo, a
drink-sodden relic, a walking,
talking epitaph of the Old West.

When the end came for Calamity
in 1903 due to pneumonia, in a
cabin outside of Deadwood, the
good folks of the town took pity,
set up a collection and buried
her next to Wild Bill Hickok. He,
who in life, had barely given her
the time of day and besides, had
been married at the time of his
card-playing demise.

The burial plot was sort of a joke
and sort of wasn’t: Calamity
claimed that Bill had been her
one true love, but what she
claimed was often bunk. I don’t
think she loved any man, for
what it’s worth. She did crave
celebrity, though, and knew she
belonged, for richer or poorer,
alongside Wild Bill on Deadwood’s
Boot Hill.

Ruth Rouff is a freelance education writer and published poet and novelist. Though she lives in New Jersey, she enjoys traveling out west and this summer plans to visit South Dakota, including one of Calamity Jane’s haunts.

– Lewiston, Idaho

‘We find after years of struggle that we do not
take a trip; a trip takes us.’
     – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

The landscape northwest of Boise looked like the Texas egg bake served for breakfast. Just past the native food truck, and the gold and silver pawnshops, were signs of Boise capital loss. Pray for the USA… Sign up for Fantasy Football… Who does your hair?

Our wagon rode the great divide between the cookie cutter houses on our port side, and the tracts of trailer trash to starboard. We passed through Eagle and gave thanks that we were two months too late for the World’s Largest Rocky Mountain Oyster Feed. Robyn and I preferred our shellfish without vertebrae.

Beyond Floating Feather Road, the dead deer, the shredded truck tire, and mansions in the middle of nowhere, were Highway 55, and the route up through the wild guts of western Idaho. We crossed over the Payette River at Horseshoe Bend, pop. 770, where the prospectors had waited for the snows to thaw, after gold had been discovered in the Boise Basin Mountains, in 1862. The last habitation, before the river turned to follow our road true north, was where God had come down and pulled civilization over for speeding. Behind the red, white, and blue used car lot tinsel banner that spanned the gate was a hideous derelict shingle box, with twenty-eight windows of filthy lace curtains. Three satellite dishes and two air conditioners clung to the walls. A fire had tried to end its misery. In the yard was a matte black mailbox on an old, rusted oil barrel, wooden pallets and paint cans and garbage cans and a large yellow mobile road sign that could have illuminated its message, if the leaning power pole beside it could have delivered enough power. Don’t get lost! Follow Jesus! But this was Idaho, Christ had been a crucified Jew, and he was long gone ahead of anywhere we wanted to be.

The sun lit the conical conifer candles and turned the brown hills gold across the left bank of the river. It was still twilight in the mountains on our right. Further on up part of the road had slipped off into the rapids, reflecting radiant rising rays of white light through the trees.  

“There’s something about rivers and rocks.” Said Robyn. The marker after the pretty town of Gardena warned us to watch for falling ones. Just past the sunflowers and the swing bridge were sheep, grateful not to be riding the trucks that rumbled by. Crowded convict cattle stood in painted metal lattice tagliatelle cages, like the ones we had posed in, the day before. A hawk circled fate, high enough overhead.

At Smiths Ferry, we drove by the 4D Longhorn Guest Ranch, where Frank from Silver City was planning to achieve his dudeness. At the Post Office in Cascade, we stopped for Robyn to mail a card. It was empty, except for the postmaster, and the sunflowers on the counter. I asked him where the Chief Hotel was. He asked me why. I told him I was looking for the twenty-foot-tall Indian sculpture made by a fellow named Big John, which was supposed to be next to it.

“Gone.” He said. “Ten years ago.”

“The sculpture or the hotel?” I asked.

“Both.” He said. Shame.

“But Big John also made a ram, out of barbwire, over at the Dodge dealer.” He said. We drove back in, past Dollar Bill’s Casual Fine Redneck Dining, to find it. A sophisticated work of art, the mountain sheep had rusted just enough of his fleece, to make you want to take up knitting. Cascade was the other half of Boise Cascade, as faded in my memory, as the tricolor ribbon around the tree, across from the hand-painted sign on the City Hall.

Just north of Cascade Lake was the Boulder Creek Inn, which invited us to ‘Stay Here, Play Longer.’ We came into Donnelly, the ‘Crossroads to Recreation.’ Welcome Hunters. The biggest sign on the trading post was for liquor, and there were metal bears, in the metal gratings around the trees along Main Street. A buggy was for sale, for $650. We followed an RV dragging an SUV dragging a boat, to the old First State Bank building’s western wooden façade, and the Silver Tip Hat Company. Inside, the old man with a long white beard and a diamond straw fedora woke to the clanging bell hanging over the entrance, which announced ours.

“Randy.” He said. “Randy Priest.” I asked if he was a cleric.

“I’ve been God.” He said. Robyn saw me roll my eyes. But Randy had been divine. In his son-in-law’s film, Ibid, he had played Don the Almighty, a cosmic cowboy creator, a duplicitous trickster talking head threshold guardian, a grizzled old man with a simple gruff message for the main characters. Inscribe some new commandments before I kill everyone. He gave the protagonists a week to find The Book and add four more divine directives.

“It was an experimental low budget road journey of discovery.” He said.

“Like our own.” I said, trying on a big Boss of the Plains hat, with a marshal’s star in the middle. I looked like Hoss Cartwright, from Bonanza.

“So, what was the first new commandment?” I asked.

“Truly see oneself.” He said. “People don’t see themselves, but rather the false realities they’ve created for and surrounded themselves in.”

“Orwell and Rockwell.” I said. He nodded.

“The journey becomes about finding the meaning that holds everything together, for them and the rest of humanity.” I asked Randy how it was all working out.

“I don’t make a killin’ but I make a livin’.” He said. He asked me what I did. I told him.

“That’s a new commandment.” He said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Heal thyself.” He said.

“That’s the journey.” Said Robyn. I took off the hat.

“Gotta go.” I said. “Bull-riding in Lewiston tonight.”

“Don’t hurt yourself.” He said, and settled back into his snooze, after the bell rang, for the second time that day.

A few miles north of Don the Almighty’s siesta, we turned onto the shoreline town of McCall. The lake, like the river, had been named for François Payette, a French Canadian who fur-trapped the area with Jim Bridger, Peter Skene Ogden, Jedediah Smith, and other mountain men, before there were so many sailboats. The first of these had belonged to Jews Harp Jack, who gave ‘pleasure rides’ to visiting tourists staying at the Lardo Inn. Bright orange pedestrian flags were mandatory. You can’t trust water. Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.

We passed an old log cabin, near the Heart of Idaho town of New Meadows, built by John Welch in 1862, after the deep snow wouldn’t let him further down along the Boise Trail.

Close beside the bubbling Goose Creek
In the Meadows Valley fair,
Leans low an ancient cabin,
Crumbling, half-forgotten, there…
There, the trader, Packer John,
Spent the winter days alone,
Trapped for muskrat, mink, and beaver,
Built this tiny cabin home…
Now this ancient cabin dozes
In the golden summer sun,
Living with a host of memories,
Dreams them over, one by one.

– Bessie Baker, Packer John’s Cabin                             

The backcountry went through Smokey Boulder Road, to a picnic spot on the Little Salmon River. Above us, on the right bank, was our own Montmartre, looking more like the original Roman mountain of Mars, than what became a martyr’s talking head, in Paris. We ate leftover Bardenay rib eye from the night before, in bread rolls from the Inn. There was white noise from the white water, for dessert.  

Where the Little Salmon met the Salmon, nestled deep in Hells Canyon, Robyn and I drove into Idaho’s Whitewater Capital of Riggins. We were far enough away from Boise, that the cops drove white cars, and the commerce was country-fried. We buy antlers. Just after Bert and Kate’s Cattleman Dining, the Seven Devils Saloon, the Big Iron Motel, with complimentary beer, iced tea, and homemade cookies, was a cinderblock and plywood villa, under a column of halogen security bulbs.

“Out here?” Robyn said. “Who would need a mini storage out here?”

“Americans live in bigger houses than ever before,” I said. “But their competitiveness has programmed them so powerfully to hoard, that they’re literally getting pushed out of their living spaces by stuff. In their own heads they’re not storing junk, they’re storing the American dream- the Rockwell time when there will be a better house to move into, where they’ll be able to read all those magazines and make all those recipes, where they’ll find a place for grandma’s bric-a-brac.”

“But they never go back for it.” She said.

“True.” I said. “It’s the first law of Newton, and the second of thermodynamics. Inertia and entropy. It takes more energy to rent a truck and sell the stuff, than to have an automatic monthly payment come out of a bank account. Maybe even in Riggins.”

The hills got bigger and browner, and turned into crenellated gravelly mountains; the river got wider and calmer, and the incident sunlight hit the sand beach at the bottom of the canyon.

A logging truck passed us, loaded with truncated trunks.

“You see any trees?” I asked.

“Maybe that’s why.” Robyn said. A mining claim was on offer in Lucile, but no one was home. Dream lots were for sale on the Salmon River in Maynard Hole. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We continued over Skookumchuck Creek, past the White Bird Battlefield site and Camas Prairie, until the mountains and the greenery and our gas ran out in Grangeville. I asked the young bubble gum cashier where we might see the ten-foot-tall Idaho Country Farmer scrap metal sculpture the local icon, with his arm raised in a ‘cheery hello.’ She continued chewing through her answer.

“Never heard of it.” She said. But the old fat farmer, in line behind us, had.

“We used to call him Ironman.” He said. “Someone stole it years ago.”

“It weighed over five hundred pounds.” I said. “And so did the base.”

“That’s why they call ‘em half ton trucks.” He said. On the billboard across the road were God’s 10 Commandments, four less than Don the Almighty had back in Donnelly, and at least one more than was apparently applicable in Grangeville. Clues to the statue’s disappearance were hinted at, over at Groaner’s Fitness, and the Blown Away Hair Salon. The Visitors Information Center was unavailable for comment. Closed for Awhile. We didn’t have time to wait.

Wheat fields waved us past the second disappointment of the day. We had come this way, in part, because of the roadside attractions. So far, we missed a big Indian chief and a big farmer. Americans love to erect monuments to their local excessive exceptionality, with the expectation that it will put them on the map. Proportion and aesthetic beauty are the antithesis of authenticity. The only important things are that these symbols must be big and inflame the senses. In Northern Ontario, we built like the Yanks. There was Max the Moose, a twenty-eight-foot Canada goose and, in my hometown, a forty-foot-tall fibreglass fish. The name of the effigy, and his slogan, had been chosen from hundreds of entries. Huskie the Muskie says Prevent Water Pollution. But here in this part of Idaho, there wasn’t enough water to pollute, and all the allegory seemed to have been abducted.

Our one last hope was further up the flatland road and amber waves of grain. Originally a way station for prospectors and mining suppliers on their way south, Cottonwood was home to the chapel of the Benedictine Monastery of St. Gertrude, said to be ‘the most ornate in the state.’ But although it may have been another roadside attraction, it wasn’t the authentic one. The real shrine to shrewdness was ‘Sweet Willie,’ the World’s Largest Beagle, a wooden Bed and Breakfast in the shape of a thirty-five-foot dog, with a stairway to the en-suite bedroom in the Beagle’s belly, and a ladder to the loft in his nose. Robyn and I parked in the Parking Lot. I made use of the adjacent giant red fire hydrant portable outhouse.

“Are we staying here?” Robyn asked.

“No, Honey.” I said. “Tonight isn’t the Voyage of the Beagle. It’s Gold Buckle Dreams.”

*         *        *

‘You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend:
Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.’

– The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly, (1966)

Mushroom clouds rose hundreds of feet into the air, from the farpoint field fires burning all over the Nez Percés Reservation. It may have had some simple agricultural purpose, but I suspected that an occasional subliminal smoke signal may have been delivered, although to whom and for what purpose at this late stage in the game, was just as hazy. The two names on the first Indian mailbox offered no clue. Larry and Patty.

Robyn and I encountered no other vehicles on Big Butte Road, which took us past the Big Butte Community Hall, a copse of blue spruce, erosion barriers of rolled grass, and a warning sign. Watch for Ice. The only two vehicles on Fort Misery Road were two trucks traveling towards us, on both sides of the highway. They were talking in parallel on their mobile phones. The smoke signal strength was no longer up to the task.

Way too far south of Lawyer Creek, we curved through the heavy equipment junkyard of Kamiah, pop 1160. Demolition and recycling were less than a prosperous industry, by what was parked in the lot of the Branding Iron saloon. The town was named after the ropes the Nez Percés made here to fish steelhead, when there were more, when they bred Appaloosas, and before the appellation was appropriated by María Elena Marqués who played a Sacagawea clone leading Clark Gable’s Lewis or Clark clone back over the Bitterroots to Three Forks in Across the Wide Missouri, a 1951 ‘mountain men’ Hollywood history. A quarter of a century earlier that when the film was set, the Nez Percé leader Hohots Ilppilp had played host to the Corps of Discovery, for several weeks during the spring of 1806. Fields of huge sunflowers, and our gas needle stuck in time were the only commemoratives. In 1895, President Cleveland, showed his gratitude by ‘opening up’ the reservation to white settlement. Larry and Patty.

Kooksia had been cracked open to invasion the same year. A remote highway work camp of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s, it was appropriated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and converted to house Japanese resident aliens in 1943, so far into the wilderness that fences, and guard towers were deemed unnecessary. When an American General was sent to arrest Chief Looking Glass eighty years earlier, just before the Nez Percé War, several trigger-happy militiamen opened fire into the settlement, killing several natives, and destroying the village. Chief Lawyer, son of Twisted Hair, and Eagle from the Light and Bird Alighting and White Pelican and Yellow Wolf and Yellow Bull and Wrapped in the Wind and Rainbow and Red Paw and Poker Joe and Five Wounds were killed in the Battles of Bear Paw and Big Hole, and their hometown replaced with guns and ammo and tackle and cheap tobacco, and a different kind of Indian. I asked the station attendant, when the gas needle finally fell, where he was from.

“Chandigarh.” Raj said. “The northern capital of divided Indians.” He directed me to the Purple Feather Smoke Shop. Inside were shelves of cigarettes and plastic eagles and T-shirts and dreamcatchers and beadwork and irrelevant Americana knickknacks. Having Kids is like being pecked to death. I bought two Outlaw Honduran cigars.

Robyn and I had come to Kooksia to see what we thought would be the last roadside attraction. Past the Old Opera House Theater and the Western Bar Café Banquet Room and the painted wall mural of a Sasquatch, on the roof of the Western Motor Inn on Main Street, was a giant ghost white leaning Elk sculpture, pushing its antlers against the inevitable.

But we hadn’t anticipated the last house on the edge of town. All of Grandma’s possessions were on the lawn, instead of the mini storage. We drove by a midget tractor and tin robot driver, hundreds of American flags around the portico, an American eagle over the doorway, a helmeted scarecrow football player with lipstick on one side of the sidewalk, a basket-toting woman gardener manikin on the other, and bowling balls down both. There were pinwheels, wall-mounted flying ducks and giant butterflies, wooden tulips, window boxes and hanging baskets, a wishing well, brightly painted chairs, plastic roses and sunflowers, a stuffed cow reclining on a porch swing, a totem pole, a cement dog, spiral mobiles, open umbrellas, topiary, flamingos, rabbits, gnomes, and a welcome sign. North Korea can kiss my proud ass.

Moving north on the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway, beyond the Tribal Gaming Casino, was a bare rock mound, the mythical site of the Nez Percé’s mythical creation.

A monster was eating all the animals. Coyote fooled the monster into swallowing him. Using a

set of stone knives that he had brought with him, Coyote cut apart the monster from the inside to release all the animals that were trapped in the monster. Upon emerging from the remains of the monster, Coyote cut it up and threw the pieces all over the land, creating the Indian people who inhabit the land. Fox asked Coyote about the land around the monster, it had no people, what was he to do? As Coyote washed the blood of the monster off his hands, the drops became the Nez Percé.

They called it the Heart of the Monster. But the monster was ahead of us. Overloaded logging trucks overtook our wagon, along the white sand beaches of the Clearwater River, the Coyote’s Fishnet, and an eagle’s nest perched high on a telephone pole.

At the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers, the clearwater darkened into the effluent from the ugly malodorous pulp and paper mill. “It’s the smell of money.” My father used to say. To me, it reeked of noxious decay.

A Harley Davidson dealership and the strip mall signs announced our arrival in Lewiston. Born again Resale and Consignment. Lord Jesus, I belong to you.

We stopped to ask directions to the best place to stay in town. The landmarks provided were all fast-food outlets.

“Go straight up the hill past the Denny’s and turn left at the Red Lobster.” He said.

“How does a lobster get to Lewiston?” I asked.

“Lewiston is a seaport.” He said. “We’re the farthest inland harbor east of the West Coast of the United States.” But that still wasn’t the right answer.

The radio was on, and all the stations were playing country music. There’s no money above the fifth fret. Three chords and the truth carried us all the way up to the Holiday Inn Express.

‘On a highway bound for nowhere
I ran my fingers through my tangled hair
As I pulled in for another tank of freedom
With a hundred miles behind me 
And a million more to go…’

– Sara Evans, Three Chords and The Truth

*         *        *

‘May your stomach never grumble. May your heart never ache.
 May your horse never stumble. May your cinch never break.’

– Old Blessing

It’s the bulls and blood, dust and mud, and the roar of a Sunday crowd.

“Y’all here for the Roundup?” The desk clerk asked.

“Just today.” Said Robyn.

“Well, Honey.” She said. “You picked it right. Tonight’s the bull riding.” Our room card opened on the yellow grey down to the Clearwater River. I pointed way over to the left side of the horizon.

“Washington State.” I said. “Tomorrow, we cross over.”

The desk clerk waved as we left.

“Enjoy the bull-riding.” She said. We promised to try.

The arena was further up the hill, at the end of Tammany Creek Road. Parking was anywhere you could find space in an endless pasture. A battalion of Dodge Ram pickups immediately surrounded our Toyota RAV. My truck is made by wrenches not chopsticks.

“Welcome to the 78^th Annual Lewiston Roundup!” Blared the speaker over the Gold Buckle Club at the top of the airport tower trailer stairs above the Mobile Command Center. “Ram Rodeo. Eat. Sleep. Ride!” Eat. Pray. Love.

Eat always comes first. Robyn came away from trying on pink cowboy hats, to a burger and a pulled pork sandwich and two Coors at one of the concession stands. Once we had our ‘over 21’ wristbands, the local ticket currency rolled off a spool, like beads at a Club Med. Three would get you a slab of Indian bread as big as a pizza, or five pounds of curly fries, a serving the size of your head. This was Idaho.

Two fat boys with fat arms, in Stetsons and blue jeans and big brass belt buckles, strummed guitar and sang bad country on a trailer with huge black amplifiers. Another big boy drove by on an ATV with a message on his T-shirt. Ohrtman for Council. The women wore short jeans shorts and tattoos.One bleached bottle blond with long toes supplicated herself to the signal in front of the One Smooth Ride She’s Wild Vodka banner, next to the plastic M-16s for sale.

“Welcome, rodeo fans!” Announced the MC. “Find your seats!” Robyn and I climbed into the bleachers, behind a short fat kid plowing through a platter of curly fries, and an old, tattooed lady playing poker on her cell phone. It was right on dusk. A big Dodge Ram truck, lights blinking off and on, drove slowly into the arena under a moody sunset sky, the last streaks of light coming through the clouds like drone projectiles. A gigantic HDTV screen on the other side of the fairground came alive with a projection of waving American flags. High banks of carbon-arc lights on towering poles thwacked on and into your solar plexus. The truck just sat there, blinking on and off. It was a Nuremberg rally.

‘And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and  said, “I need a caretaker.”

So God made a farmer. God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So God made a farmer. I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait for lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon — and mean it.” So God made a farmer. God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain’n from ‘tractor back,’ put in another seventy-two hours.” So God made a farmer. God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So God made a farmer. God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and brake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what dad does.’ So God made a farmer.’

So God made a farmer. He didn’t make him smart enough to realize that the Rockwell family farm had been industrialized into an Orwellian agricultural factory nightmare. He didn’t make him eloquent enough to take his narrative outside the religious imagery of a Dodge Ram commercial. From the Fourth Quarter of the Super Bowl to the Empty Quarter of the Lewiston roundup arena, God made a farmer into a cynical anachronism and an angry martyr.

The night riders in the cavalcades that streamed into the arena stood on their saddles, gigantic hoisted American flags fluttering large behind them, synchronized swimmers with white cowboy hats and white shirts and black bolo ties and brown horses. They were followed by a red stagecoach with yellow wheels, the fat sheriff in the open chuck wagon, waving with his wife, more stars and bars, and Toby Keith’s Angry American.

Oh, justice will be served and the battle will rage:
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage.
An’ you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A.
‘Cos we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.

A young cowgirl raced into the center of the arena, saluting with a fringed deerskin glove.

“Give it all up for Queen Darryl Kirby!” Announced the announcer. Everyone gave it all up. A posse of lesser rodeo queens followed in Queen Darryl at a distance. Some of them were so thin, I thought of taking up a curly fries collection.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” The announcer announced. “Behind every good man is an even better woman!”

“Yeah!” Said Robyn. All the other women in the bleachers gave it all up too. A group of mounted Indians dressed like cowboys rode in.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” The announcer announced. “The Nez Percés County Mounted Sheriff’s Posse!” The applause wasn’t quite as spirited, as it had been for the rodeo queens, and they looked a little uncomfortable, like Warsaw Ghetto kapos. But they were just decoration for what was coming.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” The announcer announced. “We live in the greatest country on God’s Green Earth!” Robyn and I looked at each other in agreement.

“The United States of America!” He said. “Please rise for the National Anthem!” And we all rose, as the big voice in the little girl on the podium below roared into patriotic purpose. I knew the words, having lived so long so close to the Americans and so far from their God, but Robyn had to lip sync her compliance. Everyone was too busy giving it all up to notice. A big Ram truck rode around the arena, throwing free Ram Rodeo T-shirts into the bleachers. It really was the greatest country in the world.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” The announcer announced. “The cowboy is a patriot, but the only two things you’ll see on the back of a bull are a fly and a fool.” The fools were ready to go.

In between all the love and anger, Robyn and I had met the couple in front of us. Bill and Lexie had ‘never missed a roundup,’ and were camped in the canyon. Bill had been a bull rider for thirteen years and related how insecure his life in the rodeo had been. A good rider could make up to a quarter million dollars a year, or nothing. He had no insurance, all his own costs, and just one bad ride could put him out of business for good. Or worse. I asked him what it was like.

“It’s like a hurricane dancing with a kite.” He said. “You gotta want to get off bad enough to want to get on in the first place.” I asked him if he had ever broken any bones.

“Every damn one of them.” He said, and then began teasing me about the Canadian contact sport of curling. “Tried that one time in Kelowna.” He said, wiping his brow, and grinning. “Never again.” I told him that Robyn had ridden the mechanical bull at Gillie’s in Dallas and won. He nodded.

“The only good reason to ride a bull is to meet a nurse.” He said. This time it was Lexie who grinned.

“Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any direction.” She said.

Out on the sand, the bull riders had been coming off their mounts in quick succession. The announcer announced, and ZZ Top and Alabama provided accompaniment. Boy, you’re going to make yourself dizzy… That horse didn’t want to play… He needs to have his hammer cocked tonight… Now that’s how that’s done… Live fast. Die young.

Indian bread and paper toweling went by, all mixed up together by the two too young boys with two too big cowboy hats. They stretched themselves tall on the wire fence and watched the last of the men come off the hooves. The announcer announced.

“Here’s to the families saying grace tonight with an empty seat at the table.” He said. Cans of Coors and Pepsi rode the air.

“Let us never take our freedom for granted.” 
‘The bulls and the clowns The ups and the downs
He’s hooked on this eight-second ride
The spurs and the blood The dust and the mud
This will be his first time to ride
His one chance at stardom His one chance at Fame
She doesn’t want him playin’ this game
She told him no, but he just had to go
On with his rodeo dreams’
Dawn, Rodeo Dreams

Lawrence Winkler is a retired physician, traveler, and natural philosopher. His métier has morphed from medicine to manuscript. He lives with Robyn on Vancouver Island and in New Zealand, tending their gardens and vineyards, and dreams.
His writings have previously been published in The Montreal Review. Some of his other work can be found online at lawrencewinkler.com.

The glow of coals keeps away the dark.
At its ruddy edge, a tired man lies
against a log with eyes like embers
watching flecks of red spark the sky.
He’s breathing heavy with a hand
pressed against the pulse felt in his side.

He thinks about the other side,
the one that comes after dark,
and the blood rusted on his hand
that solidifies the mark that he lies
broken under heaven’s sky.
He thinks about the embers.

They’re getting low, the embers,
but the man has nothing by his side,
save dirt and grit– sandy like the night sky
whose stars sift his fire into dark,
draining his thoughts of truth and lies
as ground cascades from his hand.

He grips what remains in his hand,
tight, as if to toss into the embers,
but stops and sighs, and now it lies
on his chest like gunpowder, offering his side
of this moment in the dark,
to be sparked by angelfire in the sky.

Everything seems too large, the stars and the sky.
To speak would have silence reply; a hard hand
penned with shadows in the dark
as if a wet bark laid atop the embers
and swapped sparks with smoke inside
his mind. It will lead me or bury me, he lies

to himself, because he doesn’t know what lies
behind his eyes in black like the night sky.
He doesn’t feel the hot wetness on his side.
There is a stiffness in his hand.
Ash and moonlight have buried the embers
and stars look like sand in the dark.

The tired man lies hand over hand,
his eyes heavy on the sky while the embers
crack their last lament and side with the coming dark.

Colton Jackson is an Arkansan exploring the Pineywoods of East Texas.
He holds a B.S. and M.A. from Arkansas State University, and an M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas at Monticello. He is
currently a Professor of English at Tyler Junior College.

He smiled through his
tombstones and lied.
And the hum fell to
pieces. The pictures of
the left hand wife forever
etched in her mind. She
had enough of his
hornswoggling one too
many times for her liking.
Pain & anger zooning in
her head, what came next
was like lickin’ butter off a
knife. Out and out, to make
tracks. Refusing to spend
the shank of her life in a
whomped-jawed marriage.
And so he is left, stewing
in his own juice.

Shontay Luna is a lifelong Chicagoan whose love of language parlayed into the realm of period slang three years ago. After finishing a book in 1920’s through 1940’s slang, she developed a curiosity of other realms. In addition to poetry, she loves writing Sons of Anarchy fanfiction, stickers and coupons.

Jake was careening down another empty westbound Texas highway having taken yet another flipper in the face from the Pinball Game of Life. All he wanted was a better bounce, a few more points and some extra play. With his best drinking buddy JD at his side and a long string of dumb ass decisions in their wake, Jake figured he was overdue for a Benevolent Smile from the Almighty Pinball Wizard. He grabbed the bottle and took a long pull.

“Sipping whiskey my ass.” he thought. Throwing back Jack Daniels was a punch that took the edge off life. Even now the edges of the white lines were softening as they rushed by.

 “Sweet.” Jake said. Soft white rectangles were a nice distraction from the memories of loser jobs singing sad country songs in broke down bars and wasting time with ladies named Sally Ann who, having given up the dreams of becoming rock star groupies, were settling for a quick screw and if luck be with them maybe catch and keep the drive by talent. Running away in the middle of the night when the Forever After hints started coming, or he started feeling too comfortable. Sally Ann would cry, hell, they all cried, and he was real sorry for that but they’d sure enough cry if he stayed. They didn’t know they were all stand-ins for Bobbi Jean and who could live up to that? Like all damn fools, Jake didn’t know Bobbi Jean was The One until the night she found him indulging his yen for Jack Daniels and lonely women one time more than she could stand. Since then, he’d been arm in arm with ol’ buddy JD ricocheting through too many dusty towns with too many tricked out pickups and not enough horses. He tried to focus past the marshmallow lines marking the edge of the pavement as a sign announcing luxury homes zipped by. Jake hit the gas; seeing another pasture where the grazing horses had given way to crops of slapped together houses was irksome.

“You know Jack, this is how the West was lost, a fancy for easy living and shiny trucks with not so much as a bale of hay in the back to justify their existence. A sad world we live in my friend.”  Suddenly Jake was back in Montana, watching the cancer take his Mama, the drink make the Daddy he’d worshipped into a mean-ass drunk letting the ranch slip away acre by acre. Jake shook his head to slam the door on the past, but he was too late to stop the hurting. Crying didn’t make a good god-damn, but Jake knew what did and tipped the bottle way back.

“Well now, life’s a bitch and then you die, ain’t that right Jack?” JD was silent, knowing Jake was fixing to mope about the night Bobbi Jean walked out. That Lacy’d been all goggle-eyed at Jake, coming into the Crossroads Bar and Grill every night, stuffing bills into his tip jar, looking all lonely and such. Not that he hadn’t encouraged her, hell he encouraged them all, that’s what you do when you’re singing in bars for tips, Lord, Bobbi knew that. He knew he’d gone too far again, knew it before she walked in with that look on her face. But here’s the thing, ‘stead of starting a fight, screaming and carrying on like every other damn fool of a woman he’d ever known, Bobbi Jean looked him dead in the eye, turned on her boot heel and was gone. All that was left was the dust from her truck hanging in the hot night air over the parking lot. Jake tipped JD way back, drinking to her silence and to feeling better. 

Never saw the cruiser, but he did hear the sound as his car tore the side view mirror clean off the speed trap sitting right there at the side of the road. A right stupid place to have a speed trap, Jake thought.  Who the hell’s gonna speed with a cruiser sitting right in plain sight? The answer was drowned out as the light bar exploded and a siren whined. The cruiser sidled Jake over to the side of the road.

 “Don’t that beat all?” muttered Jake.  He capped JD and slid him under the front seat, rolling down the window as the cop came up to the side of the car. “Evening officer, what can I do for you this fine night?” The cop slowly leaned over towards the window.

“You busted the side view mirror clean off my vehicle; did you not notice that little incident as you flew down the road?” He flashed his light over Jake. He saw a smiling hyena wearing sunglasses at night. He saw empty bottles of Jack Daniels on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He saw his quota made tonight.

“Step out of the car, please.” The cop opened the car door and as smooth as Tom Mix lassoing a bad guy he turned Jake to the front fender and told him he was under arrest.

“Under arrest! What for?” The cop slides down Jake’s sunglasses and turns him so Jake can see the side view mirror missing from the cruiser.

“Well Mr. Cool, you’re either right drunk or the sorriest excuse for a human being that I’ve seen in quite some time.”

“Look in the mirror lately asshole?” It was a great comeback; Jake could hear JD snicker in appreciation from under the seat.

Jake’s next thought came to him on a cold cement floor. The shadows were going the wrong way for window blinds and a mite too low to the floor. Could only be the bars of a jail cell. Jake lay still on the bare floor while his eyes adjusted to being open and a mite too sober. The many bars were slowly making their way into a few solid ones forming a wall before him. His mouth tasted of armadillo roadkill. Saw a khaki blur beyond the bars. Screwing up his eyes tight the blur became a sheriff, boots up on an old desk.

“Ah, Sheriff, just exactly where am I?”

“Fluvanna City Jail, boy.” The Sheriff never moved his eyes from the newspaper he was reading.

“Jail? Have I been to court? What’s the charge?” Jake made a move to lift his head, but the sledgehammer smacking his forehead convinced him to just be still. The sheriff snorted.

“I expect that means you don’t remember calling the magistrate a jack-booted Nazi, or some such nonsense.” Jake groaned; Jack Daniels talking trash, Jake paying the price, it was all too familiar. Jake allowed as he didn’t rightly recall, but had there been an accident, seeing as he had this here big goose egg. The sheriff laughed, telling Jake he must of got that when he passed out in his cell. It was 30 days, drunk and disorderly; would have been two weeks except for taking off the cruiser’s side view mirror and the trash talking. Seeing as the rodeo passing through last week filled up the county jail, Jake was all theirs. He laughed again as he cracked a tin. Jake’s head whipped up at the sound of the pop top.

“Sir, I knew I liked this town. I wonder if you have any to spare, sir. I am a bit in need of the hair of the dog, if you know what I mean.” The sheriff stood up, a beatific smile lighting his face as he sauntered over to the cell. Jake dragged himself over to the bars, sitting up as best he could without causing his head to explode. The sheriff kneeled close to Jake and brought the can up to his face.

“Boy, if beer was a nickel a can, you couldn’t even afford the smell, but seeing as I’m off duty and all, I’ll spare you what I can.” A belch poured over Jake, the sour smell of cheap hops filled his nose, made his eyes water and his stomach churn.

“Thanks Gandhi.” Jakes lowered his face back to the cool concrete to ice down his lump a bit. Laughing, the guard walked back to his desk as another sheriff walked in. They had a nice belly laugh at Jake’s expense as the shift changed.

“Yeah, laugh you hyenas, so glad to be the source of your amusement today.” He muttered, turning his other cheek to the floor. Must have been a hell of a bruise, ‘cause he could feel the swelling blossom as his cheek warmed. His brain roiled with the movement, and he knew he was gonna hurl. The effort to move to the john hurt so much he considered just staying put and letting room service deal with the aftermath, but instead painfully crawled to the john. Better to die with your head in the john then to drown in a pool of your own puke. He muttered, “Damn Jake, so it’s come to this, who’d a thought it?” As he let loose, he heard the jailers laughing behind him. Well let Homer and Jethro have their fun, he’d just made an important discovery – the steel john was colder than the floor! In between sessions, he rested his face against the cold metal bowl, easing his pulsing brain. Soon, the double vision would go away and the world would be right pretty again. Or not. It was jail after all.

By evening, he was fairly certain he might not die this day. He heard another cop shuffle in, time for another shift change. Jake had moved from the concrete to the bunk and was now resting his eyes from the wrath of fluorescent lighting. Suddenly he heard a guitar. Betsey. They had Betsey, the bastards. He thought hard while he listened to fat fingers fumble over the strings of his guitar, snickering like they knew something good. A booze busted baritone started in on Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” Jake knew they were waiting for him to go off, but Jake knew how to work a room. He steadied himself, waited for the chorus and jumped in making the cop sound like something.

Silence. Jake waited a tick.

“You boys know this one?” Jake took a chance these old farts were sentimental and sang the opening to the Sons of the Pioneers song, “Cool Water.”

“This ain’t no Sing Along with Mitch, boy.” snarled the one without Betsey.

“Now wait a minute Bob, my daddy loved that song, but I never could get it right. Can you play it, boy?” He walked over to the cell door Betsey in hand.

“Why yes sir, I can.” Jake kept the smirk off his face as the cop studied him.

“Step to the back of the cell.”

Jake did as he was told as the cop opened the door, laid Betsey on the floor and locked the cell again. He picked her up and studied her quick. Betsey was a bit out of tune, but no harm done. Jake proceeded to show the cop the chords and then played the tune, letting him take the melody with Jake adding the harmony on the chorus.

“Merciful heaven,” thought Jake as they finished, “What a chestnut.” But they let him keep Betsey and the price of the nightly hootenanny was not too high to pay for Betsey. She was a comfort once the whiskey started leaving his body. He could con the cops out of Betsey, but not out of an “off-duty” brew. Fair enough. He knew the drill and drank as much water as he could tolerate, ate what he could, took the aspirin he could beg and was grateful the sweats and shakes weren’t too bad and didn’t last too long.

The bad part was having to remember. Without JD, there was Montana, the ranch and his Daddy. It would come back to him in a dream, which was not much of a dream, seeing as how it happened. It would always start with the good times. Mama alive, the ranch strong, him helping Daddy with the horses; it was the life he thought he’d have forever. They’d talked about it, the three of them, heading back to the ranch after doing the shopping in town or selling stock at an auction. How the ranch would come to him some day, how they were building something together that would stand the test of time. Then Mama died of the cancer and Daddy crawled into the bottle to stay. Jake worked hard to keep the place going, but it was too big for even a strong young man to handle alone. Daddy just kept letting bits of the place slip through his fingers, crying sorry to Jake each time. Like that made anything better; but Jake loved his daddy and tried to be strong enough for two. Yet the more of the ranch was sold, the more Daddy drank and the meaner he got. Daddy would say things that hurt his heart. Jake tried to think hard on how things used to be, what his Mama would say if she were here, and let the hard words go by, if only for her sake. Still, he could see the ranch would soon be gone no matter how hard he worked, and a man can only stand so much before even ghosts can’t help him hold off what pride demands a man do. The dream would always end with that morning Daddy came staggering into the barn to tell him he’d just sold what was left of the ranch, right down to Jake’s horse, and it was time for Jake to leave.

“Can’t live off me anymore, boy, like some kinda damn leech.” Jake heard him say those hateful words again, watched him try to stand without weaving, reeking of cheap moonshine and failure.

“You done failed me boy.” Jake felt the sorrow and rage take over as he’d hit his Daddy, dropping him straight to the ground. He’d stepped over Daddy, thrown Betsey and his things in his truck and taken off without even a glance in the rearview mirror. With a gasp Jake would wake, raw with the broken heart he’d drug all over the West. There was nothing to stop him from thinking about the stable jobs he’d taken when he could get them, how it felt taking care of someone else’s horses. Mad as he was, he’d called his Daddy a couple of times, once from Oklahoma, another time from Arizona, but Daddy always hung up on him. The last time he tried the line was disconnected and he knew the ranch was gone for sure. That’s when he started singing in bars, Jack Daniels became his best buddy and the dreaming stopped.

Thirty days later, the jailer turned the lock for the last time and walked Jake to the impound lot to collect his car.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be on your way right away.”

“Why I’m touched at your concern for my well-being, sheriff, and I’m grateful for the free detox courtesy of the good people of Fluvanna, indeed I am.” The sheriff smirked and handed him the keys.

“Just ‘cause you can strum a guitar don’t make you shit, boy. Get outta town and don’t dawdle if you know what’s good for you. I ain’t gonna tell you again.” As the cop walked away, Jake looked around noticing the impound lot and the police parking lot were one and the same. He stowed Betsey behind the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel and turned the key, nothing. Tried a second time, nothing. The cop stopped and slowly turned around. Jake jumped out of the car and opened the hood. He fiddled with a few things as cops gathered, yucking it up. Soon Jake was dragging tools out of the back and lying under the engine banging around and swearing a blue streak. The cops carried on until, bored, they drifted off into the station. Jake waited until he was sure they weren’t watching, scooted out from under the car. Pulling out a large gas can and piece of hose he kept stowed in the truck, he ran over to a cruiser angled away from the building and proceeded to siphon off a full can of gas. Back behind the wheel, the old truck fired right up, and Jake rolled out of town toward the county highway. He reached out and snapped on the radio. They were playing “Moonshiner”, one of JD’s favorite drinking songs. Reaching under the seat, Jake found the pint taped right where he’d left him for just such an occasion. Cracking the seal, he paused. It would start up again, the waking up in strange places, the black outs, living from bottle to bottle. Then JD whispered to him of lonely women, good times with no dreams. He thought how he’d just taken the Fluvanna City cops, and he leaned out the window and hollered out loud and long. Just this one, just a bit of celebrating was all. Willie, JD and Jake crossed the county line singing the chorus in perfect three-part harmony.

I’m a gambler, I’m a rambler
I’m a long way from home
And if you don’t like me
Just leave me alone
I’ll eat when I’m hungry
I’ll drink when I’m dry
And the moonshine don’t kill me I’ll live till I die
And the moonshine don’t kill me
I’ll live till I die

She was born in Chicago, IL, many things happened and she now finds herself in Raleigh, NC, with her two retired racing Greyhounds, Empress Sue and Queen Maeve. While she’s mostly lived in big cities, her family is from Kentucky and never lost touch with country life. Should you become acquainted she might tell you of when Great Grand Dad, for her first equine experience, threw her on Joe without a saddle and with a rope bridal – the tale of the outcome became a family favorite at every gathering. She feels you should know she has a BA in Eng Lit with honors from Northwestern University.

Drinking at the canteen
Two stepping in between
Tunes from a Christine
Vocals from a Geraldine

Whirling in my cowboy boots
Twirling past the crapshoots
A pair of blondes, oh very cute
Both work as prostitutes

I love this life
I love this air
Perhaps I’ll start
A love affair

Just now, I saw her there
Up Town
Up Grade
Underdressed and Overplayed

Time to care
Time to dare
Asked her name
She replied, “Emma Clair”

She could dance
She could swing
Do-si-do
And even swing

Miss Blair might bump
Miss Blair might grind
Whiskey shots for courage
Set up on her behind

The band played standards
Honoring Hank Williams and Dolly P
Emma eyes were locked on mine
Emma eyes were emerald green

By nine, she was mine
By ten, I was hers
By midnight, I was drunk
By closing time, I was blurred

Maybe it was the Jack speaking
Maybe I heard Jim Beam instead
When the local Parson asked for my “I Do”
That’s when I got newly wed

So two years and two girls
Tons of diapers, tons of curls
They’re my Queens
I’m their Earl

I still crave Emma’s shots
I still covet Emma’s hots
She’s built like an Autobot
And as easy as a chip shot

The band honors Loretta Lynn
The dance floor is getting thin
But we make this bar our own sin
And that’s how I see it

Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 42 years, lives in 1974, and has been married for 33 years. His works are found everywhere a search engine operates.

Since the hanging, Macy Ludlow has been frequenting saloons. Keen watchers could easily see that, though she lets cowboys buy her beverages, she imbibes just enough to redden her cheeks – but no one ever notices her lithe hands dump steins onto sticky hickory floorboards. They’re too entranced by her rouge-tinted lips and amiable chatter. Though wealthy (through marriage), Macy was never like the others in Abilene’s church-crowd – she knows the names of her late husband’s riders and lets anyone dine at her table – and had been innocently pure, so her new coquettishness interests all. Even the gruffest bachelors, who’ve swore off women and never stay in place for too long, put on their newest digs hoping to catch her eye; this childless beauty is set to inherit Kansas’ largest cattle outfit and would free them from their laborious lives. But, though Macy gallivants around handing out rounds and rounds of liquor, she doesn’t pick one admirer – which only arouses more advances. After her first night out, her landowning neighbors’ wives had called on her but, unable to deter her nighttime revelry, they now declare that the devil’s ahold of poor Macy.

But reason guides Macy’s actions and, thirteen days after her husband was taken from their bed and strung up in the square, a stranger in all-black rides into Abilene past midnight on a snowy horse. A wide-brimmed black hat hides this lean man’s features, though no one’s around to witness him enter Abilene’s seediest inn; anyone up is courting Macy. From his room he hears the drunken rioting but, beat from his journey, he sleeps at once.

The next morning, in a forgettable fit of denim and his charcoal-black hat, the stranger calls the innkeeper to his table: “What was that ruckus?”

“Ah,” the innkeeper refills his coffee mug. “Ludlow’s widow’s on the prowl.” He pauses to study his guest once he discerns the man’s confusion. As the last stop on the Chisholm Trail and the base of a major railroad uniting America’s coastlines, Abilene’s used to dodgy people but when the stranger had rode in on an exhausted steed and bought a room for one night, the innkeeper’d assumed he was bland. He looks no older than thirty but, despite that, the innkeeper suppresses a flinch, for this tanned frontiersman’s brown eyes have the weary wisdom of a killer. “What brought ya? Scouts say we ain’t set to git a run fer ‘nother week.”

“Just ridin’ through.”

“Where ya headed?”

“East.”

“You?” Snorting, the innkeeper waves his calloused hand at the shiny guns in the stranger’s well-worn black holsters. “Hell, you’d fit in there like a tenderfoot roping a mustang. Who’d you go and rile up?” The man’s subsequent scowl chills the innkeeper, who hurriedly backtracks. “I’m only ridin’ you! I can point you to the station but, if you’re gonna linger, you need to savvy Abilene ‘cause we ain’t like the gunslingin’ hellhole I reckon you got run outta.”

Pausing to make sure he’s not gonna get shot, he’s stunned speechless as the stranger, upon pondering, extracts two tenners from a thick billfold: five times the cost of his room. “Mind givin’ me the lowdown?”

Though incredulous, the innkeeper pockets the cash and launches into a monologue. “Well, this here’s flat country where beef trails end and cattle get slaughtered or shipped to peckish Yanks. Ain’t a soul can scratch outta livin’ for hisself, neither. Everyone works for the Graces, the Hewitts, or the Ludlows. Each o’ them outfits got ‘nough land to fit millions o’ heads and hire top shooters to guard their just-bought stock. They butcher faster’n the famous Texas Jack draws! Ol’ Grace was a mountain of a feller, but his heart gave out year last. His sons cashed out to the Hewitts. The Hewitt’s granddaddy had twelve young’uns and them bred like jackrabbits in spring, but don’t let them fool ya. Them countless cousins shore as hell ain’t folks you wanna cross.”

“And the Ludlows?”

“Elder Ludlow’s strong as an ox and owns more land’n the Graces or Hewitts, ‘cludin’ this inn. When times are hard, he lets me off on credit. Fair fella. But ‘bout a month back a mean Hewitt who goes by name of Loco Lester caught Ludlow’s boy rustlin’ cattle to his pa’s range. Loco took the matter to court and ‘fore long Little Ludlow was a-swingin’.”

The stranger sets down his ceramic mug with a clang. “Jon Ludlow? Hung?”

“Yup.” The innkeeper’s lips purse at his guest’s shock, but he keeps on. “Ludlow only ever had the one. When his missus passed years ago, he retired ‘n left everythin’ to Little Ludlow. Truth be told, thet boy was doin’ a fine job runnin’ things, but Loco Lester found Little Ludlow’s gun on Hewitt land and even Ludlow’s riders said they seen him at night reekin’ of cow. ‘Tis a shame, fer he was a straight shooter and now his widow Macy’s drinkin’ herself blind. I hear Ol’ Ludlow’s fixin’ to boot her ‘n I reckon when he does she’ll turn Hewitt, for she near got hitched to Loco way back when. He and Little Ludlow drew iron over it, if memory serves.”

The stranger thanks the innkeeper, downs his coffee, and overpays for his room. He fastens his pack to his horse, smears mud on its vivacious pearl-colored coat to turn it brown, and asks a nearby saloonkeeper for directions to Ludlow’s estate. Heading west, he promptly spots a massive three-floor house and four brick factories. Pointing his dirty mare at the complex, he finds himself trotting alongside a sturdy fence. The fence’s gate, yards ahead, is bordered by lounging cowboys who, as he approaches, call out leeringly:

“Reckon yor ride’d gag a maggot!”

“Know how to use those shiny guns, hombre?”

“What business you got with them Ludlows?”

The stranger ignores them. As he moves through the gate, he notes their matching mousy-brown hair and well-bred steeds; though hardworking cattlemen, they’re kicking back outside the Ludlow’s domain waiting for something or, the man soliloquizes, someone – like the dainty blonde on the house’s porch. Her ankle-length cotton dress and shawl (meant for cooler weather) make her seem meek, but her bright blue eyes stare him down with predatorial poise as he advances.

When he slows his mare but doesn’t dismount, she crosses her arms. “What’s yor name?”

“You outta know better’n to ask a cowboy that.”

Her eyebrows meet as she dissects him: the patches of fabric used to mend his denim pants, the muscles badly concealed by his long-sleeved copper-toned shirt, the black hat hiding his brunet curls but not his sun-weathered skin and knowing avian eyes which are as dark as dusk, the content horse beneath his wiry torso who looks like she just wrestled a bull, and the guns on his hips. Then, at last, she nears him. She wipes muck off his horse’s snout with her pristine shawl, revealing her chalk-colored pelt, and she smiles. “Jon said a black cowboy would come on a white horse.”

He tries not to focus on her logic-defying floral scent. “Didn’t want ‘er spookin’ the fellers at yor gate.”

She snorts. “You’re welcome to scare ‘em.”

“Oh? ‘Ssumed they were welcome. Herd yore lookin’ to replace yor thievein’ husband.”

Her amusement evaporates. “My husband was no thief!”

He blinks, not expecting her ardor, before hopping off his horse. “I know. Wish I’d heard’a Jon’s charges while he was breathin’, or least got here to see him laid to rest.”

Silence ensues before Macy takes his reins and leads the mare to a pasture behind her house that already holds a strong black stallion. The stallion nickers but doesn’t hassle the majestic mare, who instantly starts grazing as the humans set off. The stranger follows Macy as she walks around hundreds of overfed cows about to be killed or shipped (the fields have to be empty when the next run arrives) to a patch of dirt marked by a sandstone. Her throat convulses as she stops beside the grave, but she doesn’t crumble beneath her grief and instead faces the stranger.

Beckoned, he removes his hat and stands with her. They stare at white flowers and a sandy rock, their minds claimed by memories they wish were reality, until at last he pulls a bullet out of his pocket and places it next to the petals.

Macy laughs. “You meant’a kill him?”

“Yor husband swore if we crossed paths ‘gain he’d put me in the ground. Took that outta his gun.” Facing Macy, the stranger finds himself fascinated; wearing her grief like a cattle’s brand, she’s not the hussy the innkeeper’d portrayed. “Jon once came down to Texas to check on his pa’s partner who oughtta send word of stock goin’ North but was skimmin’ profit. He was usin’ a fake name aimin’ to sniff out the truth quiet-like, but soon as he stepped into a saloon he got into a fight. Yor husband lost but held his own and afterwards I bought him a drink. We had no clue who the other was ‘n he was green as Sam’s bills but we took to each other right quick. We were pals ‘til, well, ain’t no sense borin’ you—”

“Tell me.”

They stared at each other.

“I need to know why Jon spoke of you when he died.”

“What did he say?”

She crosses her arms. “What do you do for a livin’?”

“Anything, for the right price.”

“Jon must’ve hated that.” Macy laughs sadly.

“He shore was righteous.” The stranger nods. “The fight he got into, thet feller was as large as a burro and could’ve knocked him dead, but he didn’t bolt. I admire anyone willin’ to die for their morals. I helped out with his crooked cattleman and as he was leavin’ he came ‘round to see if I’d be his pa’s new Texan foreman and learnt who I was. He called me a coward ‘n I made him hurt for sayin’ that but ‘stead of fightin’ back, Jon staggered to his feet and gave me that slug. He swore if we met ‘gain ‘n I was still stealin’ he’d lick me proper.”

“And? Are you still stealin’?” The stranger doesn’t answer, but her ocean-blue eyes narrow. “You aren’t here fer Jon, are ya? You didn’t know ‘bout his charges.”

“I got in some trouble back home and had to split. You needn’t worry ‘bout the particulars. Figured I’d drift somewhere not a soul knows me, mebbe go East. Start fresh.”

“So it’s just lucky you’re here?”

“Ain’t nothin’ in life left to luck.” Shaking his scalp like a wet dog getting dry, he puts his hat back on. “But you ain’t Jon. I reckon yore the sorta gal who don’t mind what path I’m walkin’.”

“Follow me.” With a final look at the grave, she leads him into the house. Men dressed for toil like the cowboys at Ludlow’s border are resting in the entrance hall. They jump up from comfy couches as Macy strolls in. She ignores them, so he does too, and soon enough they’re alone in a study. She points to the larger desk, but approaches the smaller one. “That’s where I work.”

“You work?”

“I balance the books: make shore we can buy and sell and make a profit. I met Jon workin’ for his pa.”

“They trust a woman with their business?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” As they stop by Jon’s desk, Macy glares at him.

The desk holds only one sheet of paper. The stranger, not minding Macy’s fury, picks it up and unfolds it. “I ain’t meant’a insult you. I’m just surprised folks as prosperous as them would take any mind to a woman’s worth.” It’s a letter:

They say I was caught, that my gun was in the wrong place, which is true: the Hewitts, led by Loco Lester (who you’ll know by the scar I gave him when he tried to run off with my girl), found me at their slaughterhouse and planted my gun. I dyed my cattles’ feet and tracked em there. After how it’s rumored they murdered Rupert Grace and scared his sons into selling, it’s no wonder they want to get rid of me publicly. I’m happy you came. Macy’s an angel on earth but she’s no warrior and a fight will come if it hasn’t already. I told her to never be alone, so Abilene will know if she’s kidnapped, but she can only fend Loco off for so long. I wish you luck, on this and onwards, for the Hewitts will run you off the Chisholm Trail for what you’re boutta do. But if you came, there shore is good in you – like I knew all along!

Jon Ludlow

The stranger crumples the note up. Though his countenance darkens, he regards the woman beside him sympathetically. “Ma’am, you won’t like what I aim to do—”

“I will.”

“Even if I—”

“I prayed for you. Even Jon’s pa didn’t believe in him. He’s promised his riders bonuses if they get me to marry Lester.”

The stranger frowns. “Loco already proposed?”

“At the funeral. He ain’t even wait.” The stranger’s hands move to his guns, but he doesn’t go exact justice like he yearns to. “Ain’t the first time neither. When I started workin’ fer the Ludlows, he carried me off. If not fer Jon I’d be a Hewitt.” Macy’s eyes zero in on this picture of his bloodlust but after a breath she nods. “Help me. Please.”

So the stranger checks back into the inn, much to the innkeeper’s interest. He scrubs down his horse, throws a blanket over her, and heads to a saloon. He eats dinner beside rowdy cowmen wanting to learn his story, which he doesn’t tell, and as he’s finishing everyone sprints across the street; he glimpses Macy’s flaxen hair as she’s engulfed by a manly mob.

Leaving the men to their wooing, he returns to his room and changes into his leather-black duds. Then, back outside the saloon, he unties a docile-seeming auburn horse from a post. He rides to Ludlow’s with his torso pressed against the horse’s flank so he’s not seen. He figured the outer cowboys were the innumerable Hewitts and sure enough the only riders he finds are the ones who’d been in the house; he recognizes the getups of the men sprawled out on the porch in front of a fire and, knowing they would’ve noted his coming, he dismounts and, with a thump, sends the stolen steed onwards. As their dialog restarts (once they see what they think is a wild horse go by), he soundlessly scales the gate and crawls forwards on his hands and knees.

“Jest a horse. Thought thet was that feller Miss Macy brought to ‘er office.”

“Nah, he checked outta town. Reckon he tried to sweet-talk ‘er like the rest of ‘em.”

“Fool.”

“Hell, I wouldn’t mind takin’ my chances.”

“Oh, c’mon!”

“She wouldn’t look twice at yor sour mug!”

“Now hold awn, I take offense to that there—”

“Hey!” The stranger had slithered to the house’s side and hunkered down by a prickly bush but, with his face against Earth, he’s unable to see the man who just barked. He can, however, feel tremors as what he guesses are ten galloping mounts near the fire, which makes him frown; these callers don’t mind being seen on Ludlow land at night. “We found a horse with a saddle!”

“We saw it come up.” One of Ludlow’s cowboys spits. “Swore it had no rider.”

“A drunken cowboy must’ve forgot to hobble it.”

“Keep yor voices down!”

“Why?” The low-toned male who interrupts the cowboys’ bickering sounds more polished than the others, who quiet abruptly; the stranger knows at once he’s in charge. “Everyone but Ol’ Ludlow is with Macy ‘n he ain’t got any strength left. Now, can we git?”

“Shore thing, Loco. The boys’ll direct ya. I’ll stay here and holler if anyone comes. See ya tomorrow too?”

Clinks accompany Loco’s drawling threat. “‘Less you go back on our deal.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it! Get a move on, y’all!”

The stranger waits until he can’t feel horse movements to lift his head. The man who stayed behind has his head down as he rolls up a smoke, so the stranger runs after the others unseen. Their tracks are as wide as a lane so, though they got a head start, the stranger easily finds them outside the brick factory closest to the house. They’re yelling to be heard over the din of screaming cows about to be processed:

“—in there—”

“—‘n we cut off the alarm ‘n sent home the others so you oughtta have no problems—”

“—so just get ‘em goin’! They’ll do the work fer ya!”

“Same as last time!”

The men disperse: some head inside and start whooping to round up the cattle while others, who the stranger tracks, round the factory and raze its back wall with hammers. Soon as they open the building, beeves pour into dim fields. The cowboys expertly guide them off. Instead of chasing them, the stranger sneaks into the factory and tackles a calf. Thanks to the general ruckus, no one sees him slice open his palm and coat the creature’s hooves in blood. Tearing fabric off his sleeve, he wraps his wound (so sanguine droplets don’t expose him) and hides in hay.

The stranger waits until the giant factory is eerily silent to emerge. He ropes Macy’s black horse and follows red tracks for miles. The stranger can’t study his dark surroundings but, knowing he’s moving away from Abilene across flat land, he rides hard; come morning, he’ll be found. Eventually, his panting horse slows. He coaxes the tired stallion to follow the calf’s bloody steps to a locked gate attached to a seemingly endless wire fence. Knowing he can’t cajole an unfamiliar horse to jump, he dismounts and, by hand, unearths the gate’s posts. The gate could fit five cows side-by-side – thus its destruction would be detected at first light; this thought troubles the stranger, but he doesn’t slow. Entering Hewitt land, it doesn’t take him long to hear pleading livestock. It’s rare for men like him who move cattle to see their work’s results and he sickens at the thought of the millions he’s brought to this sobbing end – but, staunch, he strains his ears. Unlike the Ludlow’s factory, these yelps are being cut short and, as he sees gleeful men smoking in the front of a brick plant, he realizes Ludlow’s stock is being murdered before anyone realizes it’s missing.

The stranger hobbles Macy’s horse. Eyeing the ecstatic rustlers, he thinks. He can’t sneak off and accuse them tomorrow – he couldn’t repair the gate that quickly and this medley of Hewitt and Ludlow riders would overwhelm any court – and he briefly considers hiding behind a haystack and picking them off like they’re grazing turkeys, but then he remembers Jon: as honest as the day is long. Jon tracked these men with red too but he confronted them and, though the stranger knows better than to do that, he rejects his savagery and stares at the men until he cooks up a way to defeat them, if not legally, then eternally.

Then, like a rattler, the stranger slinks onwards. A horse snorts as he passes, but no humans shout; they’re too arrogant to watch for an invader. As he sneaks around the building, he pops his head up every so often and sees cattle streaming into chutes that lead to a duo on a platform with mallets they’re regularly smashing into skulls. This factory’s back is as feeble as Ludlow’s – these moguls don’t expect rustlers or care about the resilience of buildings they often rebuild – so it takes mere minutes for him to dislodge enough bricks to free the stolen herd. The cattle frantically flee into the fields.

As the cowboys inside call out, the stranger pulls a lighter from his pocket and alights some of the haystacks littered around the land for feed. Thanks to a breeze, the fire swiftly expands onto the parched grass and grows into something so ruinous that Abilene’s males will be forced to leave Macy to quell it – only to find Ludlow-branded cattle on Hewitt land.

The flames illuminate the flanks of sprinting, spitting cows, but also the stranger, and he’s promptly shot at. He gets to Macy’s horse untouched and, lowering the brim of his hat, runs off.

~

The next morning, the innkeeper hands the stranger a plate of eggs and slabs of salty ham. “You hear ‘bout the fire?” The stranger picks up a fork and starts eating as the innkeeper continues. “Someone went ‘n blew up a Hewitt canner last night.”

He swallows. “Who?”

“No one knows but, well,” the innkeeper leans forwards. “As the water wagons was fightin’ the flames, they seen Ludlow cattle runnin’ wild! Looked mighty sketchy, but Sheriff came right out and found a stretch of the Ludlow/Hewitt fence busted clean through. He booked the Hewitts fer butchering what ain’t theirs but they swore they ain’t notice the mixed herds and they wouldn’t burn their own shop, so he finally made ‘em pay fer what they killed and let ‘em go.” The innkeeper pauses; the denim-clad outsider sets down his fork and looks up. “Where were you last night?”

“Sleepin’.”

As soon as his fierce brown-eyed gaze sets on the innkeeper, he regrets probing but, having begun, carries on. “I herd you seen Macy. Figured you would’ve gone to flirt with ‘er more.”

“You seen my horse, ain’t you? Girl never left the stables.”

“Shore, thet beauty grazed the whole night.” As the innkeeper backtracks, his voice speeds up as his nerves overtake his mouth. “I told them that, who came askin’.”

“Who came askin’?”

“Well, Sheriff stopped by ‘bout an hour ago. He overheard the Hewitts in jail talkin’ ‘bout a horse they seen run by thet had a saddle but no man and was seein’ if any of my guests were the sort to ride alone. ‘N Loco came by last night, fresh outta jail over them cattle, ‘n asked ‘bout you. I told him same thing I told Sheriff, that pretty horse o’ yors ain’t move from sundown to sunup, but still, I figured I’d best ask you meeself. You fixin’ to leave today?”

“Mebbe. I don’t mind this town.”

“Yeah?”

“Still as a graveyard.”

“Wait ‘til next week when a drive comes in. My rooms’ll be packed tighter’n a cattle pen.”

The stranger gulps down the last of his breakfast and takes three tens out of his jacket. The innkeeper gapes, as he did yesterday, at the abundance and dips his head, as he did yesterday, when the stranger hands it to him. “Think I’ll stay for a day or two more.”

“You shore are welcome to stay as long as you like.”

“Much obliged.” Standing, the stranger dons his black hat and goes outside. He doesn’t get far down Abilene’s main street before he hears shrill whistles and, when he looks around and spots six brown-haired men nearing him, he smiles. They range from balding to pimpled, but the stranger focuses on the shortest one; this scowling bloke, with a mean-looking scar bisecting his nose and splitting his lip, is the only one touching his pistol. The stranger’s instincts scream at him to draw and not give the identical Hewitts a chance to hurt him, but he knows joy will unnerve them more than anger, so he widens his smile into a beam. “Figured I’d see you today, Loco.”

The scarred man scoffs. “Did you?”

His happiness dies off quick as a wink. “You ain’t strike me as the sort to dilly dally.”

Loco seems unsure of how to take the blunt statement, but after a few breaths of him staring down this black-haired stranger in a denim fit which fits fine but looks wrong when partnered with his hat and holsters, he sneers. “Think it’s best you come with us.”

“Where?”

“To our ranch. We’ve got some things to talk out.”

“Alright. Lemme git my horse.” The stranger is flanked – two men behind him, two beside him including Loco, and two ahead of him – on the way to the inn’s stables. He moves nimbly into his pale mare’s saddle and is soon surrounded by horses once more, which makes the pale creature neigh unhappily. As they set off, the stranger pats her mane to assuage her claustrophobia.

“Thet’s a fine horse.” Loco speaks. “Where’d you get her?”

“Took ‘er from someone who ain’t need ‘er no more.” The innkeeper rushes into the street, but the stranger turns and shakes his head, so he returns to his morning without raising any alarm. Other onlookers eye their procession, but no one defends the aloof stranger who’s made no friends since he’s been in Kansas – not when faced with the deadly Hewitts.

“I’ve only herd tale of Texas Jack havin’ a mare that white.” Another man mumbles.

“They say his is white as a cloud.” Loco adds. “Yors ain’t far off.”

            The stranger doesn’t respond but Loco, never one to thrive in silence, doesn’t let him brood for long. “What’s yor name?”

            “What’s yors?”

            “You already used my name, partner.”

            “I shore did, but a name’s story’s as important as the name.”

            “Well, when I was young I went a bit loco fer a pretty little girl who had eyes bluer ‘n water ‘n smelled of flowers. She didn’t like me much, but the ones who fight taste sweetest! I finally had ‘er in my arms cryin’ fer God ‘n a hombre ridin’ by decided to play hero. He weren’t man ‘nough to challenge me ‘n came at me with a blade ‘n my back turned.” As they trot on, the stranger studies Ludlow’s ranch where dozens of riders are running about conjuring clouds. He wonders if it was Macy or Ol’ Ludlow who had the prudence to do a round-up to see what they lost – and remembers how the cowboys’d mentioned other times they’d raided the factories; there’ll finally be proof of rustling once they’re done, like Jon wanted all along. “Left me with a scar nastier’n an unwashed drunk.”

            “Jon told thet story different.” The men in front whirl around in their saddles as the stranger turns his gaze to Loco, whose jaw clenches. “Said thet since you was treatin’ Macy like cattle you earned yoreself a brand.”

            One of the frontmen pipes up. “Little Ludlow’s name ain’t often used in these parts.”

            “I ain’t make his acquaintance in these parts. We met in Dodge.”

            “In Texas?” Loco snorts as their caravan veers right and heads towards a wire-coated fence that the stranger remembers from last night. “Little Ludlow went thet far South?”

            “Years back.” Moving through a spiky gate into Hewitt land, they pass a phalanx of brunets with loaded rifles and murderous scowls. Ignoring them, the stranger watches his scarred foe – for that’s the Hewitt who’ll decide his fate. “It was the first time Jon’s pa put him in charge ‘n he was a tenderfoot ‘n trusted the first feller he met. I reckon you’d fare better down there.”

            “Even when yore praisin’ me it sounds like insultin’.”

            “Take my talk how you like.” The others peel off and hang back with their kin by the gate, no longer expecting the stranger to run since he’s penned in. Loco turns left. The stranger follows him past six brick factories. The furthest building is the only one that isn’t screeching and is black with soot. They stop next to it. Internally, the stranger admires his handiwork; the copper building didn’t collapse (so no cattle were unnecessarily hurt), but the chutes look like giants used them as toothpicks and the ground’s as lifelessly grey as a twilight cemetery. “Shore is a mess.”

            “Shore is, ‘n done by one man too. Had a hat jest like yors.”

            “You ‘ccusin’ me of something?” The stranger turns toward Loco. Their hands don’t move, but a practiced eye would see them quaking with energy that would burst if the other went to arm himself. “It ain’t smart to make an enemy of a stranger.”

            “I gave you many chances not to be a stranger. I been honest. I asked fer yer name—”

            “You ain’t been honest.” Loco’s eyes narrow as the stranger continues. “‘Cause you know Jon was once seen ‘round Dodge. He went ‘n roped the wrong calf there, ‘n yore a smart ‘nough feller to hear ‘bout that.”

            The scarred man frowns, but then guffaws. “Yore talkin’ ‘bout Little Ludlow handin’ Texas Jack a bullet? Thet story’s got more holes than a screen door! I bet thet outlaw’s made-up, besides, with his horse from Heaven ‘n his garments from Hell. Texans surely use him as an excuse – fore you can’t arrest someone who don’t exist.”

            “You ain’t wrong. Lots of them stories are just thet, stories. Have you herd the one ‘bout his mare?” The stranger waits for Loco’s mouth to open to go on. “He calls her Luna,” under him, his mare snorts. “On ‘ccount of ‘er pelt. A feller he sold cattle to sold ‘em to a traveler ‘n told him they got stolen. The feller split, but Texas Jack tracked him to a San Antonio brothel, hauled him outside with his pecker still out, and scalped him: showin’ thet anyone who offends Texas Jack gets got. The feller’s mare charged him once he was done ‘n he was nearly bucked. He shot at her, but she was too quick fer even his lightnin’-fast gun.” Last night as the stranger’d galloped off, the sunset-hued flames would’ve disfigured his black-encased figure and his horse hadn’t been ghostly white, but Loco’s eyes widen as he puts two and two together. “It took days to track ‘er ‘n win ‘er over, but he ain’t been seen without Luna since. People say that mare’s the only creature he shows any kindness to.”

            The shrieks of steers being massacred fills the silence until Loco speaks. The cowboy isn’t as cool as he was before, but his eyes still gleam – and the stranger gets why, for a yell would bring a brown-haired army to his side. “Yor quarrel ain’t with me.”

            “Yor quarrel ain’t with me neither.”

            “Then ride off. No Hewitt will harm you. You have my word.”

            “Yor word ain’t mean much, Loco. Ain’t you lied to the law? With yor cousins ‘n Ludlow’s traitors, even Ol’ Ludlow thought his son stole.” Jack recalls when, years ago, Jon burst in on him telling his riders about a wagonful of army wages heading through Dodge he wanted to swipe. Jon had stormed up to the larger man and berated him, which made one of Jack’s men laugh: Yer lettin’ this little feller squawk at ya, Texas Jack? Instead of being scared, the foolhardy heir had doubled down and, after Jack beat him, had lobbed him a bullet: Yor heart’s as gold as a Spanish Armada ‘n yore the finest shot I ever seen, but yore livin’ a coward’s life! Yore better than this, Texas Jack, ‘n if I see you ‘gain ‘n you’re still wastin’ away, I’ll put that in yor chest! As a renowned gunslinger known from Montana’s forested peaks to New York’s skyscrapers, Texas Jack has heard his share of insults, but he’d never been so affected by words – and it took him years to realize it was because Jon was right; hiding behind an angelic horse and guns, Jack was a coward. He was smart, but he’d never gotten anywhere in life without causing pain. “Jon was the only man to ever see good in me. He was the salt o’ the Earth, ‘n you’ve made everyone think otherwise.”

“So you came to avenge him?”

“Three weeks ago some sheriffs down South got their heads together ‘n tried to reason out where I rest my head. They rounded up some men who used to ride fer me ‘n one turncoated. They ambushed me ‘fore I knew I was bein’ hunted. I would’ve died if not fer Luna hearin’ ‘em. Most gunslingers who call it quits buy a place away from anyone else where they only need their own two hands, but I’ll be chased ‘til I’m dead, so I’m goin’ to the last place anyone thinks Texas Jack would go: East. I came to Abilene fer the railroad, though I’m shore Jon’s spirit is happy I stopped by.”

 “You know how peaceful Jon was?” Loco again tries to appeal to him. “His spirit wouldn’t want you to spill blood.”

“But I ain’t here for him. I’m here fer Macy. She asked fer my help.” Jack can see in Loco’s hastening breathing that he knows arguing is futile, but he gives the scarred man a chance. Seconds later when he goes for his pistol, Jack’s guns go off. Luna takes off as the bullets land, sprinting into Hewitt land, and Jack turns around. He aims for the others’ legs and sees some of them fall but, knowing every Hewitt will soon be chomping at the bit for his demise, he spurs Luna. She’s quick enough for every shot meant for Jack to land short, but Kansas is too flat for him to feel safe – for he can always see someone on the horizon.

It isn’t until the sun sets that he guides Luna to the fence dividing the Hewitts and Ludlows’ land. The mare readily jumps it and, once he sets a course for town, Jack sighs. Looking up at the darkening sky, he promises whoever’s up there that Loco Lester Hewitt will be the last creature he’ll kill – even if that means his own death.  Luna snorts loud enough for him to notice and, when he looks down, he realizes she’s gone to Jon’s grave. He stares at the sandstone headstone, wishing he’d come while Jon was alive, before insisting there’s still time to prove him right; if he makes it out of Abilene, he’ll somehow even the scale on the hundreds of thousands of fatalities he’s caused: animal and human.

As he turns Luna towards town, he notices a bundle atop the grave. He gets off Luna and, as he squats, his nose fills with Macy’s floral scent. He speedily unpacks her gift and finds a linen suit, collared shirt, dress shoes, tie and felt bowler hat. All but the shirt, which is the blue of a clear afternoon, is gravelly grey and, after goggling the dress for minutes, Jack dons it. He folds his old clothes and places them, along with his guns and hat, by Jon’s bullet. Then, he turns to Luna and brushes her mane. Mournfully whining, she doesn’t move – for she’ll stand with him long as he lets her – but time isn’t infinite and at last he squeezes his feet into too-small dress shoes, tucks in his shirt, and walks on.

Looking like an Easterner, no one in Abilene pays him any mind: not the brunets lingering by the inn or the bald man with a sheriff’s star patrolling the streets. A tired clerk sells him a ticket for a coach enroute to Philadelphia that’s boarding. He runs to the track. Relaxing in a seat, he tries to get some much-needed shut-eye, but is plagued by the sound of stock being handled in time for the next run – which is due to arrive any day.

Bela Seitz has never met a gunslinger or a wrathful widow. She spends her time in NYC as far from cattle herds as possible, working on Broadway and writing in buildings taller than the entire state of Kansas.

“The day President Harding died, Paul picked me
up in his Ford Model A Pickup. We worked
the gold mine near Franklin Mountain. I swigged
A & W Root Beer, chewed Vienna Sausages.
Paul rolled a cigarette, then we rumbled toward the mine.

That Thursday, another cloudless day, sweltering. No breeze.
Hot enough it’d about wilt tobacco. Bearable 100 feet down.
I picked, shoveled rocks and dirt into wheelbarrows.
A few young bucks toted them, dumped into a large bin
attached to ropes. Mules pulled it to the surface.

Hell, we might get a few cents per ton. I must’ve sweated a bucketful
by quitting time. Most miners had no shoes. Damp black soil
stained our bare feet over our ankles. Locals called us
‘Black-anklers’ but shopkeepers didn’t mind our money.
After work that Thursday evening a few of us climbed

onto a foreman’s truck and he drove us toward Steeds,
the truck kicking up clouds of dust – the fool drove real fast.
Quarter mile from Steeds, he gunned the pedal on a curve and
the truck listed – we slammed to one side, down a slope,
flipped over and over. I struck a pine tree and was out like a light.

I woke, black as night, on a speeding train with all sorts of people –
some dressed highbrow, some in rags. Behind the engine, our car had
no windows. Some dark figure shoveled coal into the roaring furnace.
The engineer turned his head – face was dark with soot and evil looks.
The boiler roared. We zoomed faster and faster, got hotter and hotter.

We yelled ‘Stop!’ but the engineer waved as wind whipped our cheeks.
He yelled, ‘You paid full fare and now you’ll pay your due.’
He slammed brakes and we screeched to a stop. ‘Welcome to paradise.’
Dark things prodded us off with burning rods. It was so hot my shirt
and dungarees singed, burned my face like splattering grits but

it was darker than a mine shaft. We were blind as moles.
It smelled foul – like sulfur, rotting roadkill, sour milk.
I screamed, felt like I was thrown into lava. All around me
yelling, screaming, crying, cursing. Never heard the like. Tried to run
but the ground was hot as roofing tar on bare soles. Kept jumping.

Then I felt someone snatch my wrists, pull me upward
and I blinked awake by a tree at dusk. The other miners stirred,
tended scrapes, bruises. I felt a goose-egg on my brow and a bloody lip.
We staggered to the road, hitched a ride to Steeds.” The reporter paused,
put in another cassette. I rocked, sipped black coffee, smoked, flicked ashes.

“That’s about it. Never drank no white liquor since, near sixty years.
Joined a church, got serious about the Lord and the Word. You saved?”
The reporter cleared his throat. “Well, this isn’t about me; it’s about you.”
“Cannot remember those verses dad used to read about,
about some damn train, but I swear, I think I rode on it.”

The writer has written sacred and Christian verse for many decades. He’s appeared in Ancient Paths, Amethyst Review, The Windhover, Prairie Messenger, The Christian Century, The Merton Seasonal, and others. He is a septuagenarian, happily married, “Poppy” to two granddaughters, a Christ follower, volunteers at a prison camp, and is a Celebrate Recovery member. His Jesus Through A Poet’s Lens is available on Kindle. Visit him at Petercvenable.wordpress.com

Firelight keeps trying on our faces,
not choosing, just testing who we are in the dark.

A match goes out. Then another.
Smoke lifts without asking permission.

The guitar doesn’t play—it presses the room,
string by string, like it’s checking for fracture in the air.

Wood holds the sound the way bone holds weather.
Every note arrives slightly bent, like it had to pass through something first.

No one speaks. Not because of silence,
but because sound is already doing the talking
wrong and right at once.

Outside, the night stays close to the walls
as if it learned listening from us and decided to do it better.

Ash drops without ceremony.
No one calls it meaning. It just falls where it falls.

Louie Rivers is a poet from Mississippi. His work explores memory, erosion, labor, landscape, and the physical remains of human experience. He is interested in how objects and environments carry emotional and historical residue.

Dusty’s day started out shitty enough.  While threading his cowboy belt through the belt loops of his tight Wrangler jeans he pulled a little too hard, and the massive rodeo buckle jerked up and slammed him square in the balls. “Oh Goddam it!” he screamed in agony as he slumped to the floor and waited for the pain to subside.  Well…that was just the start of it because this was going to prove to be one ball-buster of a weekend.

Jill Thrill, his main squeeze for all of three weeks was in the kitchen rustling up flapjacks and eggs while Fleabag his trusty cattle dog lay in the middle of the floor scheming on tripping up the unwary which now seemed to be her sole purpose in life.  No one knew for sure just how old she was, but judging by the blindness in her right eye a good guess would be 15 years if she was a day. 

Dusty was late to his chores because they had both tied one on last night at Desperados where the whiskey flowed like a mountain stream and the bullshit flowed right along with it.  Jill Thrill was hung over and in no mood for lengthy conversation which was fine with Dusty because he couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be taken as an insult because she was mighty sensitive to any constructive criticism at times like this.  The flapjacks tasted like straw with a hint of sawdust and the yokes of the sunny-side-up eggs were busted.  He drowned it all out with a massive pour of maple syrup which resembled molten road tar as he looked out the window contemplating  what lie ahead.  It was already one scorcher of a day at ten in morning, and the evaporative cooler was on the blink requiring a new motor.  By eleven-thirty it would hit 105 degrees.  It was Saturday, and if he hustled with the piled up weekend chores he could hit the hardware store and get the motor and install it before nightfall, so at least they could have a poke in relative comfort.  So in anticipation of that he suggested to Jill Thrill that she spend the day in the comfort of air conditioning at her mother’s house.  “I ain’t got a single word to say to that old bitch,” Jill Thrill screeched, and Dusty decided to let sleeping dogs lie; so now Fleabag could have some company.  It had been two years since she went out to the pasture with him but that didn’t much matter as he only had five head left and three were destined for the slaughter house in mid-August after fattening up on what was left of the green spring grass.  He needed the money because they had cut his hours at the auto shop, and besides, it had been a while since he had eaten any decent steak, so he would be sure to stock the freezer with a little for himself and Jill Thrill if they lasted, but he had his doubts.

He got his saddle and harness out of the tack room and hitched Rocket up and rode out on his twenty-acre spread with about twelve of it in grass and the rest covered with typical ribbonwood, sage, manzanita, and some occasional yucca.  This place with its worn-down doublewide and sagging barn was nothing to write home about, but the views out over the high plateau on up to the towering mountain ranges was spectacular.  The cows were languishing by the watering hole surrounded by some ancient cottonwoods and one of the expecting heifers had dropped a calf, apparently last night, with the good news being that the little fella’ was doing fine.  Things were looking up.  He pushed them into the upper pasture knowing that they would mosey back down to the watering hole by sunset.  Then he rode out to the North fence line to finish  repairing the barbwire section he had started last weekend.  It wasn’t all that much of a ranch, but on any ranch the work is never truly done, so you had to break down your tasks and take solace when you were able to finish any given one.  It was 1:00 in the afternoon when he road back to the barn unhitched rocket and let him go join the cows.

The truck needed an oil change, and the shop was good about letting employees use the lift if there weren’t any paying customers needing to be serviced.  When he arrived there was one car already up on it so he parked the truck and decided to walk to the hardware store. Dillion said he would call him when he got a turn and already have the truck hoisted by the time Dusty got back there.  Cowboys looked out for other cowboys, and this wasn’t nothing Dusty wouldn’t have done for him.

He stopped in the Dairy Queen for a vanilla cone and ambled a quarter-mile to the hardware store seeking what sparse shade the too few street trees provided as he went.  The motor cost $120.00, and just as he finished paying, Dillon called so he double-timed it back to the shop.  He did the oil change lickety-split and headed home, but fate intervened when he spotted Jill Thrill riding in Ralph’s Sawyer’s pickup and sitting up close next to him and talking turkey in his ear.  They didn’t see him, so he tailed them to Ralph’s motley singlewide at the only mobile park in the center of town that was more of a shanty town than anything else.  The locals called the place, “Loserville,” and it chagrined Dusty to think that he was being outshined by a no count like Ralph who was a known drug dealer and ne’er-do-well.  Jill had previously encouraged Dusty to buy her coke but he begged off saying it was just so damned expensive and he had seen so many of his friends go bust and split town because of it.  Well…just because he didn’t want to climb up on that treadmill didn’t mean that she wouldn’t, and Dusty was sure that she was going to give up her pussy to get it.  Let her fuck him – why did it matter now?  Dusty raced home, gathered up what few things belonged to her, and sped back to Ralph’s place.  He dumped it all at the door steps, banged on the door, and waited for Ralph to come out.  Ralph opened his door just a crack and shouted, “What’s up Dusty?”  “Apparently your dick asshole.  You can have her.”  Ralph knew of Dusty’s reputation as  brawler and a mauler and thought discretion the better part of valor, but Jill had no discretion at all and burst out the door screaming, “You don’t own me.  I’ll do what I want.”  “Go ahead and do it then.  See if I care.  We’re done.”  She rushed at him and tried to scratch his eyes out, but he just raised his massive arms and fended her off.  Ralph stepped out pointing a pistol and blurting, “You just move on now Dusty.  There’s no reason to mistreat a woman.”  “So’s you the gentleman now?  Is that it Ralph?  I’ll hit you so hard they’ll arrest you in Temecula for speeding.”  Ralph gripped the pistol harder and thrust it forward and stepped closer to Dusty who put his hands out saying, “Fight like a fucking man Ralph.”  “Shoot his ass off!” Jill Thrill shouted at Ralph, and as he looked towards her in shocked disbelief, Dusty snatched the pistol from his hand just as easy as pie.  “Ralph, you stupid son-of-a-bitch, I ain’t going to jail over beating you senseless.  Thanks for the gun.”  “Fuck you!, fuck you!!, fuck you!!!,” Jill hollered at the top of her lungs as Dusty got in his truck and laid rubber  roaring away.  She sure wasn’t much of a enlightened conversationalist, that was for certain a bonified fact.  Well… that killed any thought of having a poke that night…at least with Jill Thrill.

When Dusty got back to the ranch he immediately stormed into the barn and viciously threw twenty/thirty/forty haymakers into the heavy bag that he kept hanging there for times such as these.  It got his frustrations out and sure beat dealing with the cops who he hated with an unbridled passion.  With the steam now blown off, he went to his home and got to work on replacing the cooler’s motor.  There was literally nothing mechanical that Dusty couldn’t fix.  Growing up just like his daddy did, who grew just like his daddy did, the Well’s men were self-sufficient sons-a-bitches who lived by the code that if you needed help then look to your hands at the ends of your arms.

He made short work of installing the motor and sat at the kitchen table guzzling a Fat Tire beer with the swiftly cooling air blowing over him.  He got to thinking on Jill Thrill.  She sure could hold his interest in the sack, he had to give her that much.  He’d miss her banging body, but it wasn’t exactly a secret that she got around.  She was pretty much like all the others over the last few years.  Dusty liked his woman fast in tight skirts or jeans with their cleavage popping out.  Sleaze with an edginess always got his motor running but the gas always ran out quick, and this “relationship” was no different.  At 34 he was the living breathing embodiment of Ray Willie Hubbard’s Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother made famous when Jerry Jeff Walker sang it back in ’73 at the inception of the Outlaw Country music movement where Willie and Waylon and a host of others hung out in Austin and dressed in black and did a variety of rollicking tunes based on fuck what the establishment thinks.  In truth, he had no more insight into the innerworkings of love now than he did when he was 20.   But now he was crowding 40, and all that outlaw shit was getting old.  Once he passed 37 he started getting desperate concerning why he wasn’t yet married and settled down which led to a seemingly endless succession of fast to start and faster to end truly horrible relationships.  Dillon liked to tease him that he might as well just walk up to a woman and say, “Hi, I’m Dusty.  Do you want to get married?”  Well…perhaps he should take a long hard look at how he was approaching romance in general, but for tonight, he just wanted to get laid.  He was also conflicted over his run-in with Ralph Sawyer.  True enough that he was a douche-bag coke dealer, but a cowboy should never take another man’s gun, even if that man stole his woman.  He decided he would take out the ammo and give it back to him after work on Monday.

At six in the evening the air outside was cooling down some so he decided to saddle up Rocket and ride out to check on the newborn calf just to make sure the little rascal was doing all right.  Dusty was the last of a dying breed.  Cattle ranching had been a way of life in the late eighteen hundreds through the early nineteen hundreds but had given way to agriculture by the end of World War Two.  By the ‘70’s it was pretty much all over but the shouting when the agricultural conglomerates moved in, swallowed up huge acreages of land, and started pumping enormous quantities of water out of the aquifer.  Today, what few ranchers that were left were more like gentleman farmers than cattle barons.  Dusty kept up a vegetable garden and a kitchen orchard to save on groceries but he oftentimes felt more like a hippy getting back to the land than a cowpoke driving the little doggies along.

His cell phone rang startling Rocket who he calmed before answering.  It was Dillon – who else?  And what else, but what it always was on Saturdays when his wife was out of town at relatives?  Same shit, different weekend.  “Hey buddy, I need a wingman tonight.  There’s a couple of sisters I met at the shop that want to meet some real cowboys, and you know what George Straight says, ‘They call me the fireman, that’s my name.’  You want to douse a couple of hot ones?  Come on; it’ll be fun!  Meet me at Desperados at nine.  See yeah, wouldn’t want to be yeah.”  With that he hung up before Dusty could get a word in edgewise.  But what was there to say, anyway?  He was a single successful guy who was horny as hell and he had no one to answer to.  Hell yes, he’d be there with his dancing boots spit shined, his jeans skin tight, and the rhinestone buttons on his western cut shirt gleaming.  And, of course, he would be sporting his favorite partying belt with the gargantuan rodeo buckle with one of the crossed derringers detachable and loaded.  Hell yes, he would be primed and ready to have a whole lotta’ fun tonight.

Desperados was a bar right out of central casting with the swinging doors, a solid oak and brass walk up counter, and bottles of every known brand of alcohol in the Western Hemisphere stacked up high in the rear and made to look even larger by the gigantic mirrors behind them.  Dusty arrived at 9:15; fashionably late not wanting to appear desperate, and Dillion wasn’t there yet. The vast expanse of wood dance floor was already starting to fill up, and the music was blaring some of that new who can scream the loudest music that was really rock masquerading as country.  Townes Van Zandt was probably rolling in his grave, but what the hell?  Dusty wasn’t here for the music – not tonight.  He spotted Dillon with the girls on each arm.  They were lookers, all dolled up with big hair, bright red lipstick, and their jeans took on a life of their own as they sashayed in.  Dillion was probably the guy Confederate Railroad had in mind when they recorded Redneck Romeo.  He not only looked the part, but he could cut a rug with the best of them.  The crowd separated and made way for them faster than Moses parted the Red Sea, and Dillon took his seat at his usual table as if he were sitting on the throne of Henry the VIII.  He had a certain arrogant verve about him, Dillon did, and it was obvious to all that the royal court had arrived.  Dusty walked over confidently and said, “Hey Dillion, ladies,” as he tipped his Stetson to them.  Dillon made the introductions saying, “Girls, this is Dusty, the roughest toughest cowboy in these parts.  Dusty, this Shawna and Shanna.  Twins, as you can see.  Ain’t they something?”  Drinks were ordered.  Idle chit chat was exchanged in.  Physical features were ogled and lusted after.  The twins made their selections.  At the start of the first slow song Shanna took his hand and led him out onto the dance floor.  Her tightly pressed body against his was telling him that tonight was going to be a good one, and his crotch was telling her that he was up for it.  The next song was one that Dusty could actually stomach and he and Dillion and the girls really burned up the hardwood with some fancy dancing to Alan Jackson’s Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow and as Alan finished singing, “Oh, I’m chasing that neon rainbow / Living that honky-tonk dream,” Shanna whispered in his ear, “Time to saddle up and ride cowboy.  Let’s get out of here.”

Well…this evening was really starting to take off…and then the shitshow began to commence as Ralph Sawyer and three other dipshits who were obviously rough trade made a beeline up to them.  “Got a bone to pick with you, Dusty,” Ralph, obviously emboldened by his cohorts, blurted out.  Shanna’s body tingled under his arm as she sensed more than a hint of danger.  “Look Ralph, I let you off the hook today. I’m even considering giving you back your gun come Monday.  But if you fuck this up for me (he tipped his head towards Shanna) there will be hell for you to pay.”  “What’s a matter Dusty.  You don’t want your ass kicked in front of your new slut?” a voice boomed out.  It was Jill Thrill.  Who else?  Why wouldn’t it be?  Dillon assumed the floor saying, “Four on two.  You boys got it in you?”  They were pondering that very question mighty hard and most likely would have determined that they didn’t, but Jill Thrill forced everyone’s hand as she reached out and grabbed a heaping handful of Shanna’s hair.  Shawna was on her scratching for her eyes and kicking for her shins.  And so it started.  Dusty plowed a right straight down the pike into Ralph’s jaw and he dropped like a ton of bricks.  Dillon started doing a tap dance on one of the three toughs head, and the other two grabbed hold of Dusty.  Big mistake. Dusty stomped one of his shiny cowboy boots on one’s foot braking it in three places, while head butting the other who flew in reverse into the bar, and as he careened off of it Dusty sent two sharp left hooks into his ribs breaking a couple and cracking a couple more.  Turing to see if Dillon was okay he was pleased to see him kicking his fallen adversary in the stomach and swearing up a storm just to gain crowd approval.  Dillon sure had a flair for the dramatic, you had to hand it to him.  The crowd roared their approval which they accepted like the conquering heroes that they were.  Just to drive the crowd into  a frenzy the girls hopped up and wrapped their long legs around both of them while slamming their tongues down their throats.  The cheers from the crowd were deafening.

Could the evening really get any better than this?  Well…no, unfortunately and predictably there was an all-encompassing group buzzkill as the cops came streaming through the doors with guns drawn.  Fucking party poopers one and all, they immediately cuffed Dusty and Dillon.  Steve Wallace the bar owner spoke up in their defense.  “The other guys and that nasty bitch Jill started the whole thing.  They didn’t give these guys any out.  What was they supposed to do?  And I ain’t pressing any charges.”  The cops went into a group huddle and one then went and uncuffed Dillon.  “What about Dusty?” Steve Wallace asked.  “There’s other charges,” the lead cop responded.  “Such as?” Dusty asked.  “Such as carrying a loaded firearm, smart ass,” the cop responded as he reached down and unclicked the derringer from Dusty’s belt buckle.  “It’s legal,” Dusty asserted.  “You don’t have an open carry permit dumb ass,” the cop curtly replied.  Dusty hung his head and said, “Don’t suppose you could let me off with a warning if I go straight home and apply for that open carry permit just as soon as possible?”  “No.  Not on your life.  You’re coming with us.”

The holding cell at the County jail was crammed tight with weekend drunks and wife beaters, but everyone steered clear of Dusty.  For his part Dillon didn’t allow his concern for his wingman to interfere with his first two on one in years, and he was able to douse the desire of both of the twins.  He did have a certain panache, after all.  The girls went away and back to their husbands sexually satiated and thoroughly happy. 

   Dusty didn’t spring for his bail and waited to see the judge in three days who he suspected would waive bail and send him home under his own recognizance, which he fortunately did.  The judge even agreed to waive the $1,000.00 fine if Dusty agreed to relinquish his derringer belt, which he did.  Justice was served if not Dusty’s sense of self-well-being.  He would keep Ralph’s pistol for all the grief he had caused him, but it would never be as cool as that belt.  Arriving home he was dismayed to see Fleabag dead as a doornail in the middle of the kitchen floor.  He buried her out by the barn and went to an animal shelter and acquired a young Australian Shepard who he named Dirtbag.  That’s the reaffirmation of the cycle of life – out with the old, and in with the new.

Dusty’s cowboy life wore on. Finding love was an elusive endeavor while his life in general became a deary proposition. He lightened up on the whiskey and the hellraising in order to gain clarity but is unclear if he has.   As of today, Dusty awaits middle age with a certain resolve not unlike the persistence of a gnawing toothache. 

The good news is that the auto shop restored his normal hours so Dusty is in no danger of losing his ranch.  One day a young buck came strutting in to pick up his sports car and sparked up a conversation with Dusty in obvious awe and admiration of his cowboy persona.  At least that was still intact for all the good it did him.  Dusty decided to give the kid the straight skinny and quite possibly a better shot at life. 

“Hey kid…you want to be a cowboy?  Don’t.”

John C. Krieg is a retired landscape architect and land planner who formerly practiced in Arizona, California, and Nevada. He is also retired as an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certified arborist and currently holds seven active categories of California state contracting licenses.

Carston Van Der Bloom could see the small cabin in the distance. It didn’t take him long to track escaped slaves. He’d spent years tracking them all over, and this was no different. It took him two weeks to find Ramses after he’d disappeared from the Harrington plantation. Van Der Bloom tied his horse to a low-hanging branch of a tree and tugged at it to make sure it didn’t wobble at all. He filled the other hand with rope and headed for the cabin.

The light from the fireplace danced with the glass of the front window. He knocked at the cabin door, then pulled the hammer back on his pistol. A voice answered in Shawnee, and Van Der Bloom answered in the same tongue. The Shawnee woman opened the door slowly, and a flash from Van Der Bloom’s pistol illuminated his figure as the hot smoke left the barrel of the gun. Her body fell to the wood floor.

Ramses sat by the fireplace as still as a deer in the forest, waiting for the dark figure to approach. Van Der Bloom knelt and used his knife to take the woman’s scalp, using an old lace to tie it to his belt. His steps were slow, and he came to the fireplace and took a seat across from Ramses.

“Did it feel like you were gone long?” Van Der Bloom asked.

“How long does it usually take ye to find folks that run away?” Ramses asked.

“Doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I am here now.”

“‘Spose I shoulda expected ye.”

“Yes, you should have.”

Van Der Bloom looked over his shoulder at the body, then at the space: the traditional logs that made up the walls, the wooden paneled floors, the fireplace.

“I want to know if, for you, the thought of getting away is as exhilarating as the chase is for me.” Van Der Bloom asked.

Ramses was perplexed.

“If you’ll oblige,” Van Der Bloom said.

When I saw you get off ye horse, I thought, ‘he bigger than people say.’ People said you was Dutch and that Dutch people were tall. You came up on the veranda with Benji, the slave ye caught. Chains dragging, fingers stained with dirt, tired, and cold. Virginia’s winters normally ain’t that cold. But, that year, 1860, it was cold and bitter, and we seen a lot of snow.

The last bit of light was leavin’, and it was gettin’ dark. I was workin’ with the cows and horses–a ranch hand, or cowboy, they called us. Me and the other slaves stopped what we were doin’ and just watched. We’d all heard of the mythical slave catcher, Carston Van Der Bloom, and those that didn’t sure was told about him that day. We never saw his eyes or much of his face. We only saw the brim of ye hat, and that always found a way to cover things. You could see the scruffy jaw. Never quite could get a good look at ye.

“I’ll be damned,” said Mr. Harrington. 

Robert Harrington came out of the front door in a thick coat to join the two men on the veranda. He had a big grin on his face. 

“You do indeed always deliver. I admit, I had my doubts.”

“No need,” said Van Der Bloom. 

Harrington waved his hand to signal to Jones, who was the overseer, and me. The three of us took Benji to the barn to a spot where Jones liked to beat people. He took some of the slave gals there, too. They’d come back to us and be silent for months. 

The barn smelt like horse shit and hay bales. Jones tied Benji to a post and told me to stand there and watch. Deep down, I think they always wanted the slaves to watch when they beat one of us. Make us know what’s gon’ happen if we run off. Jones also wanted me there to check on the horses and make sure they was fed.

“Benji, don’t you move,” Jones said.

He slung that whip, and it flicked into Benji’s flesh. The whip made a shallow ditch in the skin, and the white meat quickly ran red. Jones flung it again, making another long piece of open flesh to make an ex. He spat and smirked.

“I don’t think Mr. Harrington would take it well, you beatin’ Benji too bad,” I said. Benji was one of the best workers on the Harrington plantation, and Mr. Harrington liked Benji in particular for that. 

“Think about it, Mr. Jones,” I said.

I been beat like that and see that same smirk before. Caught me reading once. I never let him catch me again. Jones shook his coat off. I was trying to stay warm, watching my breath out in front of me. 

“Ramses! Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Fetch me a pale of water. I’m gonna need to wash him off when I’m done teachin’ him a lesson. See, you ain’t this brave, Ramses, so you’re safe and good here. No need for me to do you like I’m doin’ this boy.”

Never knew why, and no else did either, know what on God’s earth made Mr. Harrington call me Ramses. We all guessed it had somethin’ to do with the Egyptian things he collected all around the house. I never saw the inside of the house, but that’s what the others said. Jones didn’t know that I thought of runnin’ away. I ain’t the only one. I tamed horses. Coulda easily took one and gone, just like that. I had to think about my boy, Otis, all of five years old. Lucky enough, we still together. His momma gone now. 

I ran up to the house for the water and set it down for Jones. My coat wasn’t thick like Jones’s, and I was shivering. I looked at it, sittin’ on the dirty ground. 

“Don’t even think about it,” Jones said.

I looked away and tried to stand firm, waiting for the man to finish what he was doin’. The sound of Benji hollerin’, the agony, was gettin’ to me. It cut me deep like I was bein’ whipped to death, too. I stopped feeling the cold and was shaking after each strike against that man’s flesh. I thought of Otis, and when he would get grown, he could be whipped like that. Jones was heavin’ between lashes and didn’t hear a damn thing for the two seconds I let that spade drag in the dirt over to where he stood. I ain’t a small man, by no means. Bigger than Jones, for sure. I lifted that spade, and in that cold, my muscles seemed to double in strength at that moment. Me, and it towered over Jones until I brought it down like God brought down lightnin’ and thunder. Benji was on his knees, and he heard Jones’s body hit the dirt. Blood, skin, bone, and hair mussed in the dirt, none of them could see Jones’s face anymore. Benji could barely turn to see the body, and when he did, the pace of his breath and the fatigue in his eyes barely changed. I threw the spade into a pile of hay and put Jones’s coat loosely on Benji’s back. His feet were like weights as he stumbled all the way to the slave house. 

Some of the other slaves were waiting in the room for Benji, and recognized that it was Jones’ coat that he was wearing.

“Where’s Pa?” Otis was askin’ for me. 

Benji told him I was doin’ God’s work.

They took the coat and hid it in a corner of the house. Tended to Benji’s wounds with some cotton cloth and such. 

I flung Jones’s body on my back, wishing I hit the fool with more than one blow, and I carried him all the way to the old oak tree. Another place Jones liked to whip folks. Night came, and I went back for the spade and dug a trench deep enough to cover Jones. I got back to the house with the others, and ‘course they had questions.

“What you gonna do?” Benji asked.

“Don’t know,” I said. 

I looked at Otis, just watchin’ us talk. At that age, they don’t know what’s goin’ on. He knew somethin’ was wrong, but not what. Thinkin’ about leavin’ alone was right and wrong all at the same time. How could I leave my own boy in this condition? We barely survivin’ daily. Harrington’ll get another overseer and keep whippin’ folks. One day, it could be Otis that’s tied to a tree gettin’ lashes. Could have the dogs on him if he run away. All the same stuff could be comin’ his way. It’s just how it was. 

Ramses took a swig of moonshine and then fingered around in his pocket for a cigarette. He lit it and tossed the match into the fire burning next to them in the living room. Any movement he made, he managed to keep an eye on the barrel of the pistol that pointed at him. Van Der Bloom was as still as a tree, not moving a millimeter.

“I couldn’t let my son live like that. Not without me. We packed some things for the journey. I took Otis by the arm and took Jones’s coat. We headed for the barn and found another coat for Otis. It was too big, but it didn’t much matter. We left at night, and since the property was so big, no one was lookin’ for Jones. Not a peep. We get to the edge of the land, and Mr. Douglas is out there havin’ himself a little huntin’. Otis was small enough to get behind a tree. I told him to keep his head down, don’t move, and I’ll be back to get him when I’m done. And I snuck up on Douglas and yanked him off his horse. Big knife he had for guttin’ boars, and I got that off of him. I was quick. Jammed that knife in his belly a few times and left him there in the red snow. Otis and I set off on the horse, ‘cept you. But you did catch up with us yet.’’

“What did you do then? Where did you go?” Van Der Bloom asked Ramses.

“Well, only thing that made any sense was to go north,” Ramses said.

“And that’s how you ended up here in Pennsylvania?”

Ramses nodded.

“What are you gonna do now?” Ramses asked.

Van Der Bloom looked at the dead Shawnee woman on the kitchen floor. Her scalp was removed, and the white flesh shone in the light from the fireplace.

“I may sell this scalp for coin first, then I’m taking you back to the Harrington plantation.”

“The great Carston Van Der Bloom selling scalps? That’d be the day.”

“Killing Indians will always be worth something.”

“Until they’re gone,” Ramses said.

Van Der Bloom shrugged. Otis came out of the bedroom and stood at his father’s side. He said he had a nightmare. Ramses’s eyes widened, and he told Otis to go back to bed, but he didn’t listen. Van Der Bloom didn’t seem to mind the boy standing there.

“When you sat there telling me that story, I thought, ‘wow, you’ve been through a lot.’’’

“Maybe you should let me go.”

“Would you let you go, sitting where I’m sitting?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. Might not ever matter. Never gonna be white.”

Van Der Bloom nodded.

“I’ve never had any sympathy for your kind. Not going to start now. I have a reputation—one that I earned. Letting you go would change that.”

“Nobody got to know you. Let me go.”

Van Der Bloom was silent. Otis got closer and hugged his father. The fire was burning hotter, and Ramses moved the blanket away from his lap. He sniffled, and in the light from the fire, he could see Ramses’ eyes glistening. 

“I couldn’t let my boy stay there. I had a chance to go alone, and quickly too. I coulda taken a different way and ended up somewhere else. I brought him into this world, and that might not mean anything to you. To you, him and me just niggers. And the job is to catch us and take us back. Well, after seein’ Benji get whipped like that—like so many others before him, I didn’t want no more of it. Didn’t want it for Otis neither.”

“All that doesn’t matter to me.”

“How could it? You’re a white man. You won’t ever know what it’s like to be me and go through what I been through.” Ramses paused. “You got any children?”

Van Der Bloom shook his head. Ramses wiped his eyes. 

“I’m gon’ bet you wouldn’t let ‘em live like we was livin’. You’d break away too.”

With his other hand, Van Der Bloom reached down for the moonshine and poured a gulps-worth into a glass he found. He threw his head back, and the drops of the liquid escaped at the corners of his mouth and wiggled through the coarse hairs of his beard like mice in a maze. 

“Don’t say anything else. The journey to get you back isn’t a short one, and I anticipate, and I hope I’m wrong, that you may try to escape again. So, the journey may be longer than I want it to be.”

“But do you understand why I had to go? You ain’t got a children, but what would you do? You woulda ran away just like me. You’re a man, and I’m a man. You free, and always gonna be free. The thought of being a slave never occurred to you.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Havin’ that smell of a new land—a different tree in the forest- was somethin’ else. One of them trees that didn’t lose its leaves in the winter. I knew I wasn’t close to the Harrington house no more. You probably wouldn’t even notice somethin’ like that.”

Van Der Bloom stood up and holstered his pistol. Ramses and Otis held one another while Van Der Bloom went for a bag hanging on the back of his horse and set it down in front of Ramses. 

“I’m going to take something from you,” he said. 

“Why? I’ve got nothing left to give. I thought I had freedom, and you’ve taken that away from me.”

From the bag, Van Der Bloom removed a mallet. He unsheathed a big knife and stood over Ramses with the knife and mallet in each of his hands. 

“For the inconvenience,” Van Der Bloom said. 

He motioned for Ramses to lay his hand on the side table. He stood for a moment looking at the big broad hand and the fingers, analyzing before he put the knife down—a cowboy could still do his job with two fingers missing. He settled on the fourth finger and the small finger of the left hand. Small pieces of wood remained unburned in the fire. He took one chuck of wood and gave it to Ramses to put bit down on. As he gently pressed the mallet atop the knife, the thought did cross his mind to put a bullet in each of their heads and bring nothing back. The bounty was greater if he brought them back alive. They were an investment. No more thinking, he said to himself. He looked at Ramses in the eyes, holding the mallet and the knife. He could see fear, but it was not fear of going back. He also gleaned that from all of the talking he tolerated from Ramses. He held his son’s hand with his free one. The mallet rose and fell. The wood piece was still hot and burned sort of crescent at the corner of Ramses upper lip. The two fingers were put into a small cotton cloth Van Der Bloom brandished immediately. He packed up the bag and strapped back on the horse. 

Morning fog concealed the sight of Van Der Bloom’s appearance onto the Harrington plantation. He joined Mr. Harrington on the veranda just as he did the week before to return Benji. The other slaves joined together to watch the meeting, looking for sight of Ramses or Otis, or both. Some of them cried, knowing that no slave ever escaped Van Der Bloom. That was his legend, and it added to his myth. Except he was no longer a myth. They’d seen him in the flesh. Some thought he was doing God’s work. That they were meant to be subjected to toil, all day in the sun, sweating through the night, and shivering in the winter. 

Van Der Bloom opened the cotton cloth, now brown with dried blood.

“I took his life. He wouldn’t come willingly,” Van Der Bloom said. 

“And the boy?” Harrington asked. 

“The boy got away.”

“No matter. He’ll probably die out there. A bear or a wolf’ll get him,” said Harrington. 

“Do you want to keep the fingers?”

“I’m not a savage, for God’s sake.”

“Are you satisfied with the evidence of his death?” Van Der Bloom asked, looking at the fingers.

“Yes. You can keep those and do what you want with them.”

Van Der Bloom collected his money, and since his hat was low, and again, no one saw his face. He tucked the cloth containing the fingers back into his coat. Harrington shook his head in both disgust and disbelief. There was still something he admired as he watched the famed slavecatcher walk away, and mount his horse. As he trotted into the fog, he hoped to never see him again.

I am a Florida native of Jamaican descent currently living in Jersey City, New Jersey. I have been working in the healthcare field in New York, New York, for over seven years. I studied English Literature at Florida International University and I post my poems (sometimes reading aloud), thoughts, readings, and short stories via Substack under A.N. Miller at https://substack.com/@anmiller?utm_source=user-menu. I have published short stories such as Maps and Meeting the Maasai in Vocal Media, as well as Cinema in Zouch Magazine. I’m currently writing a collection of poems, as well as a short story collection of Westerns. You can find me on Instagram and Threads at amillersdble. I enjoy exploring how people are shaped by their different cultures and the customs of their times.

It’s been a while.

We’ve been in a bit of a drought here at Underwood Press.

And, it’s funny that, as I step further away from the grind of earning a living, I also seem to get busier with everything else: Podcasts, writing, film making.

If you haven’t already, please take a look at our newest podast: The Nephilim Hunter. You can find it under the “Podcasts” heading at the top. Season two is in post-production as well as some other podcasts.

But, it’s also good to be back at True Chili.

We’ll be opening up the general submission window shortly.

Got to keep that campfire glowing.

Thoughts of a life that’s as complicated as everyone else’s,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather’s has stopped at 9:20; we haven’t had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still, the chimes don’t ring.
One day you look out the
window, green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee and evening’s
slow return. Steam from a pot of soup
rises, mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We’ll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled upon love, running out of time.

John Kucera was educated at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in New Reader Magazine, The Sandy River Review, Connections Magazine and Friends Journal. He lives in Arizona, where he writes and teaches.