Showdown at Possum Trot

by David Watts

  George Pickens was there from the General Store. As were Sally Swenson, the girl who’d witnessed Rudge setting the fire, along with the boys from Hampton Stables at the end of the street. Ruth Ann Moore from the Outfitter’s Shop brought her famous rhubarb pie and the young widow, Lilly Christianson, brought blackberries from the small farm outside town her husband left her when he died of the fits after he got nibbled by a Coral Snake.

  Galen noticed that Jake paid special attention to this woman and after a while getting irritated watching them oogle deliciously over each other he started throwing peas at him just to cause a little trouble.

  As they finished their meal and were returning to work Jake noticed a rider at the end of the street, black coat, black pants, wearing a flat, wide brimmed, pitch-black hat that reached straight out about five inches on all sides. Jake expected to see a gun strapped to his side.

  The man had a hatchet face and a beaked nose. A pencil thin black mustache underscored his facial features. He stood still. The breeze picked up and flapped his long coat. By god, there was a gun strapped to his side!

  Jake continued his path to the back of Rusty Bucket but was intercepted by a shout from the man in black. “Are you Jake Paxton?”

  “That would be me. How do you come by my name, stranger?”

  The man dismounted and made his way to the yard where the outdoor table was set. “Your telegram,” he said. Not seeing recognition, the man continued. “I’m your new pastor, Jebediah Tull.” He came to a stop and stood stiffly in front of Jake.

  Jake’s mouth dropped open.

  “I know,” said the man, “you’re thinking I’m not a pastor but a bounty hunter or something”—he turned and looked back behind him—“or maybe a train robber.” He tilted his head, spread his arms and laughed. He brought his face up close to Jake’s. “Right?” he said.

  Jake couldn’t answer right away.

  The pastor turned slightly and started stoking a pipe he’d pulled from a deep pocket in his long coat. It was a gnarly briar that twisted itself in three directions. “In my years doing the work of the Almighty,” he said, “I’ve made a discovery that has served me very well.” He lit his pipe. When he turned back he looked straight at Jake. “There’s nothing like a gun to encourage attendance at church.”

  Jebediah turned and walked his horse toward the church with its little parsonage standing off to one side at the end of Main Street, a commanding position which looked straight down the center of town.

  “I know that name,” said Galen.

  Jake shifted weight and put one hand on his hip. “Now I reckon a man couldn’t drag a name like that out of his brain,” he said, “if he pulled on it, real hard.” Jake leaned toward Galen and pointed with one finger at him. “But that’s not the important part. What I want to know from you is just how do you know that name?”

  Galen leaned back like he was about to deliver the Sermon on the Mount and said, “Made quite a stir up in Wyoming, hear tell.”

  “That don’t tell me a damn thing! What kind of stir?”

  Galen was quiet for a moment.

  Jake chewed on a toothpick.

  “Not sure I rightly know,” he said.

  *****

  Next morning the sun rose early to two soundly sleeping cowboys, a little stiff from the activities of the previous day. But by nine o’clock, Jake had moved his rusty joints to the front yard with a saddled horse standing by his side.

  “I’m off,” said Jake, mounting his horse.

  “Where to?” said Galen.

  “Moon Town I reckon.” He clicked his tongue a couple of times and took off at a gallop.

  Galen turned to look at Sabo, standing at the front gate. “Is he serious?”

  Sabo smiled. “It’s his metaphor,” he said.

  Galen looked cockeyed. “What the hell?”

  “That’s just what he says.”

  Galen glared at him.

  Sabo shifted his weight, clasped his hands together. “He used to go to Moon Town all the time, down around Ballinger. Paid a lot of attention to a whore there named Sibyl. Moon Town closed, Sibyl ran away. He don’t go there no more.”

  “But. . .”

  “Yeah, I know. So Moon Town is just what he says when he goes off to visit Lilly for a spell.”

  “Lilly? Lilly Christianson, the young widow?”

  “That one, for sure. Usually stays a couple of nights, fixes the holes in the barn, the leaky water trough, the windmill pump—whatever.”

  Galen was quiet a spell.

  “You’re wondering what everybody wonders,” said Sabo.

  “What would I be wondering?”

  “Why they don’t just live together?”

  “Why don’t they? Seems sensible, not that Jake would do anything sensible.”

  Sabo shrugged. “They like it this way,” he said.

  *****

  Jeb Tull settled into his little cottage next to the church. He oiled his black, Long Barrel Peacemaker and spun the cylinder, clicking it crisply in place with one flick of his wrist.

  He hummed a little bit of “Bringing in the Sheaves.”

  He had some business to tend to.

  FOUR

  Jebediah Tull strolled through the town. He was wearing his clerical collar. He was dressed all in black, a wide brim flat black hat, a scruffy three-day growth on his face, and his black long-barrel Peacemaker strapped to is side. He looked like a bizarre mixture of Devil’s deputy and an emissary of the Lord.

  He wandered into the Angel Dust and tapped his gun barrel on the bar, then placed it on its side, unattended.

  “Dark whiskey,” he said.

  The whores scrambled upstairs and hid.

  The barkeep served with trembling hands.

  Horse looked over the railing of his office up in the loft and decided to check into this character. He wandered downstairs.

  “New parson in town?” said Horse.

  “Not new parson. New to this town.”

  Horse eyed the parson skeptically. “Maybe you already know, things are going pretty well here, parson.” He leaned on the bar and got in Jeb’s face. “We don’t need any bible-toting preacher-boys ‘round here.”

  Jeb leaned back so he could scrutinize his heckler from under his wide dark brim. His eyes emerged like cougars from a dark cave. He tossed his drink down and slammed it on the bar. “Rumor has it,” he said, “you tar-and-feathered the last parson you had here.”

  “He got a little uppity. Over reached his domain, if you know what I mean. It’s a popular thing to do to parsons who get out of line.”

  The corner of Jeb’s mouth curled upwards, a half-smile with a hidden meaning. He placed one finger on the bar and slowly rotated his gun around in circles, pausing it when it pointed at each of the two men facing him.

  “I don’t do tar-and-feathers,” he said. He parked the gun pointing at Horse and patted the bar three times with an open palm. His eyes were stony hard. “And the men who tried are not around to tell their tale.”

  The barkeep excused himself to the back room. Three men playing poker at a table behind the parson went out the door.

  “We need a little understanding,” said Jeb. “What I need is to fill my church every Sunday. I don’t care if they are believers or hypocrites, saints or sinners, don’t matter to me. I’ll preach the same sermon and lose no sleep over the matter. In return, I won’t bother you as long as you are running a legitimate business.”

  Horse flashed cocky. He leaned back into stiff arms with two hands on the bar. “I don’t think you get to decide if I’m legitimate or not, parson.”

  Jeb looked bored as if the conversation were strictly routine. He yawned.

  The yawn threw Horse off balance.

  Jeb adjusted his hat on his head. “I see you are struck dumb. No matter. You understand my terms.”

  He holstered his sidearm and strolled casually toward the door.

  Horse found his voice and almost shouted
after Parson Tull. “You talk a dangerous talk, parson. Clearly you don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

  The parson stopped dead in his tracks and stood with his back turned to Horse for a few beats. Slowly he rotated his head around. He paused. He dropped quickly to a squat, drew and shot a hole in the pedestal under the Venus de Milo. Horse gasped.

  The parson stood, faced Horse, held his gun aloft for a second and holstered. He hooked his thumbs in his belt. “You forget something,” he said. “I got the wrath of God on my side.”

  He turned back around and walked deliberately out into the sunshine.

  *****

  Galen returned from watering the horses to find Jake sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch dumping some Beechnut into the trough of a very thin paper. He pulled the drawstring with his teeth, pocketed the pouch and began licking the edge of the paper.

  “Been gone three days and the best you can do to help out around here is to sit on your ass smoking a cigarette.”

  Jake lit up. Blew a couple of smoke rings.

  “You’re more cranky than usual,” he said. “And that’s saying some, cause generally, you ‘bout as dark as a blackbird.”

  ”Fine for you to talk, just back from your little camping trip over at Lilly’s.”

  Jake waved his cigarette in the air, dismissing the reference to Lilly. “Don’t change your darkness none.”

  “I just seem that way compared to your chatter, chatter, chatter all the time. You as bad as a mockingbird in a Catalpa tree.”

  “Moping around here, moping around here. You know what you need? Something to take the starch out of you.“

  Galen turned away. Watched the windmill turning.

  “What you need,” Jake rambled on, “is a real good poke.”

  “That’d be your remedy for about everything now wouldn’t it. Got a hangnail, go get a poke.”

  “Maybe that Crissy girl you’re so sweet on. Anybody can tell she’s a great piece of ass.”

  Galen frowned. “She’s a lot more than that.”

  “She’s a whore. That’s what she does for a living, Galen. Heal the lonesome woes of mankind with a little female wraparound.”

  “She’s got more about her than that.”

  “How would you know a thing like that?”

  “She read my eyes.”

  “What do you mean, read your eyes? You got words and letters written across your pupils?”

  “She said I was a troubled man.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “She said what I needed was a woman.”

  Jake about rose out of his chair with exasperation. “Everybody does. Besides,” he slapped the arm of the chair, “I just told you that.”

  “Not just any woman. She said it had to be a woman who can untangle a troubled man.”

  Jake cackled like a hen. “Naw. For that you’d need a magician.”

  Galen shook his head. “One thing more,” he said.

  “What?”

  “She even told me what happened that made me that way.”

  “Hah! This I gotta hear!”

  Galen wasn’t listening. His eyes glazed over. When he spoke he spoke as if speaking only to himself. “When I watched her walking back into the Angel Dust,” he said, “I thought of all the conversations she carried with her that we haven’t shared.”

  Jake didn’t get that story right away.

  *****

  The Rusty Bucket was back up and running. The fire that had destroyed the back end of the structure and scorched the rest was nothing more than a distant memory and a great big pile of charcoal.

  Jebediah Tull stood in the middle of the street, eyes glued to the new back end of the Bucket. He surmised the rest.

  Inside he encountered an unexpected sight. Rather than having the tonality of a dark and dingy bar, the atmosphere was light and lively, with tables scattered about the room covered by checkered tablecloths and a bar off to an inconspicuous side of the room. He inquired for the owner.

  Jackson Charles replied, “That would be me.”

  “I thought this was a bar,” said Jeb.

  “It is.”

  “Don’t seem so.”

  “We decided to set a different tone. More family, if you know what I mean. We serve food, provide some entertainment from time to time, and yes, serve spirits for those who want them.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  Jackson chuckled. “We’re family run. My wife Missy is the cook. She’s in back right now, I’ll introduce you later.” He paused and looked around.

  “See the girl in the gingham dress serving the table over yonder.”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s Charity, my youngest daughter.”

  The parson nodded. He noticed Charity’s long auburn hair, her abundant features.

  “And the tall, slender girl behind the bar with straight black hair down to her waist. . . ?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s Faith. She’s my oldest.”

  Jeb tucked his finger in his belt. He looked at Jackson as if he knew his secret. He let him wait a few seconds, then said, “So where’s Hope?”

  “Ah, so you figured it out.”

  “How could I not? First Corinthians 13, ‘And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three. . . ‘”

  “Yes, but we believe them all to be equal.”

  “As they should be.” He looked at the two girls. They smiled, or waived. “As it should be,” he repeated.

  “Yet when it’s all said and done, it is all about love,” said Jackson.

  “Three girls. How did you know?”

  “Didn’t.” Jackson smiled. “We just started naming them and by the time we got to Hope we knew it had to be Charity next.”

  Jeb nodded. “Clever,” he said. “And you said something about entertainment?”

  “The girls all play instruments and sing,” he said.

  Jeb looked around, took a breath, scratched his head. He had a faraway look in his eyes. “Let’s talk about next Sunday,” he said.

  *****

  Horse sat at his desk, steaming. Things were not going his way. And he still had this grudge to pay.

  He pushed a few papers around on his desk. He poured a drink of his favorite brandy. He went to the balcony and looked out over the edge. The whores were scattered through the room talking to customers.

  Martha was in a conversation with the hired hand off the goat farm east of town. Rosalie was stroking the leg of a young man, obviously just passing through town. Crissy had two men at her table deep in conversation. They were leaning in close, trying to touch her. She was playing it flirtatious but coy. She knew what she was doing. She was working them into a frenzy.

  He watched her work for a while. The two men took out money and placed it on the table. She had them in a bidding war. How does she know how to do that? One of the men emptied his wallet. She held up her hand to halt the action and led him away. Horse watched her gracious form leading him up the stairs.

  A valuable commodity, he thought, that girl. The man doesn’t know what hit him.

  Horse paced the floor. The image of Crissy stuck in his head. He stopped pacing and held a fist in the air. Valuable as she was he’d hate to lose her from the floor, but maybe she could be more valuable in another way.

  He sat down and thought about it a while.

  He called for his gunslinger, Hitch Carbide.

  *****

  Jeb finished making his rounds to all the shops and houses in town, the General Store, Hampton Stables, the Outfitter’s Shop. He took a deep breath before deciding to ride out to the farms and ranches around. Instead, he turned back to the church and started making a sign.

  Homecoming Next Sunday

  Come Back to Jesus

  Pot Luck and Music after Church

  Everyone Welcome

  He stuck a post to it and hammered it in the ground.

  *****

  That evening, after a
ll the guests had departed, the Angel Dust girls, worn out and sleepy, climbed upstairs to their room. They were having a conversation like they always did after work, mainly to check in with each other as to how they were doing, if their customers were respectful or troublesome. Crissy had other things on her mind.

  “It’s strange,” she said.

  “What is?” said Martha.

  Crissy tossed her hair and straightened her back. “Well for one thing, Horse hasn’t said boo to me, not for days now.”

  “He’s just cooling down,” said Rosalie.

  “He’s not,” said Crissy. “I think he’s secretly hot as a firecracker and just as explosive. I think he’s just waiting to explode, wanting to explode.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Martha, “he’s always gone through periods where he gets quiet and sullen.”

  “You can’t keep Horse down,” said Crissy. “He doesn’t give in to nobody, no matter.”

  “Everybody has to give in sometime,” said Rosalie. “He’ll get over it.”

  “This is different. I feel it in my bones.”

  Martha went over and sat by Crissy’s side. She put her arms around her and hugged hard.

  A tear struggled from Crissy’s eye but paused on the edge as she tried to suck it back. “Maybe I’m just nervous,” she said. “But with all this turmoil in town now it’s hard to tell what’s going on. It was easier when he was more predictable, even if it did mean a little roughing up from time to time.”

  Rosalie shook her head. “Better to fear what we know than what we don’t know?” she said.

  “He’s the same as he ever was,” said Martha.

  Crissy looked up, rubbed the one tear from the corner of her eye, wiped it on her nightshirt. “You’re probably right,” she said. “Tomorrow is another day.”