Ghost Town: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  His minced-up deputy stands there, weaving about, still wearing his crushed bowler and the broken blade in his chest, his body sliced open in a hundred places and showing its inner regions, but with his own bloody knife outthrust as though ready as ever to take on all comers. The fire shimmers patchily on his chopped-up face and casts a hulking shadow on the chuckwagon behind him.

  Awright, awright, deppity, we take yer point, says the brawny lout irritably. But whut about our goddam cattle?

  The deputy, his vocal cords cut and dangling from the hole in his throat, cannot reply, but he turns to the bald ocarina player and gestures with his knife.

  Reckon he wants yu t’pipe us a tune on yer sweet patayta, says the bespectacled hunchback.

  The man cups the instrument in his large bony hands, bends his gleaming dome toward the fire, and once again imitates the moan of lowing cattle. Almost instantly, about as fast as the fluttered shuffle of a deck of cards, the prairie fills up all around with grazing cattle again.

  With that, they set him down again and unbind his ankles. He picks up the fallen Winchester. Ifn yu could do thet, he grumps, why’d yu make sech a fuss?

  Aw, sheriff, dont mind us, says the preacherly fellow with a squinnied wink, as they drag the ruined fat man away into the dark beyond the fire. We’re jest skylarkin, y’know, a little cockeyed fun like cowpokes always do, it’s in our nature. Now why dont yu set down’n hep yerself t’some beans’n buffalo hump.

  Aint hungry. He’s starved, more like, but their vittles do not appear to be of the edible variety. Wouldnt say no t’summa that whuskey though.

  Haw. A silence descends as though fallen from the star-pocked sky. Bet yu wouldnt.

  No one moves. Hard to read their expressions. The fire has died down to coals, painting their faces a deep crimson. Mostly, behind their thick red masks, they seem to be grinning or staring at him blankly. Waiting to see what he’ll do. No choice about that. If he wants anything he’ll have to help himself, and he’s already manifested his wants. There’s a lone bottle standing on a stone just on the other side of the fire, catching its light. Like a taunt. He watches their hands. There’s nothing to be heard in the tense motionless silence but the hushed pop and crackle of the dying fire. Even the cattle seem to have paused in their grazing. He has about decided to shoot the bottle, just blast it away and ask for another, see what happens, but then his deputy leans over to pick it up, squirting jets of blood out of his wounds, and staggers over to him with it, stumbling right through the firecoals. As he hands it to him, his good eye rolls up into the back of his head and he collapses at his feet. The deathly stillness maintains. He wipes the blood off the neck of the bottle. Thanks, deppity, much obliged, he says flatly and, watching them all warily, puts the bottle to his lips.

  The bottle is empty. He tosses it away, listens to it clatter over the parched earth, a thin paltry sound that makes his eyes ache. He’s all alone, lying on his back with his hat over his face to shield him from the blazing midday desert sun. He can see, peering out into all that light from under his hat brim, that the men of his posse, what was once his posse, have cleared out and taken their herd with them, nothing left of them but for a few bleached bones and a charred place where the campfire was. Plus a saddlebag. He doesn’t want to know what’s in it. He struggles painfully to his feet, trying not to fall over again; his head weighs a ton, hard to keep it on his shoulders. Near him, half buried in the sand: the skull of a steer gazing up at him with empty sockets, a note stabbed onto one of its horns. We’re over yonder, it says. Come find us ifn yu’ve a mind to. Any extry hand welcum. Yer pals the x-posse. There’s a P.S. on the other side: Watch out fer thet rattler residin in the skull, it’s a real mean fucker. Too late. Its fangs are already driven deep into his inner thigh, its flat glassy-eyed head as big as an old scuffed boot lodged there in his crotch, its huge striped body wriggling wildly between his legs like a freak dick from a carnival sideshow. The dull ache in his head is immediately replaced by a sharp ferocious pain throughout his lower parts. His chaps and buckskins should have protected him, but the big snake has struck in the soft part of his thigh, and now its fangs are helplessly locked there in flesh and leather. He whips his old staghorn-handled bowie knife from its sheath and cuts the rattlesnake’s head off at the throat. The headless body twists and thrashes on the ground, but the severed head, even after he stabs it between the eyes, continues to gaze up at him from between his legs with a look commingled of regret, familiarity, and grinning defiance. He rips it out and tosses it away but the fangs remain like steel needles driven to the bone.

  He unknots the chaps and tears at his buckskin breeches, but they’re a tight fit; he can get them down off his butt but not past the snakebite on his thigh: they’re like a second skin. Already his thigh and groin are swelling up and changing color and he’s starting to feel sick. He knows he should suck the poison out but the bite’s in a place he can’t reach, even if he could get his pants down. So he cuts into the punctures through the pantleg with his bowie knife and squeezes the blood and pus out as best he can, feeling his whole body begin to puff up and turn feverish.

  He figures he’s done for, but then he spies the town over on the horizon, shimmering in the heat. It’s his only chance. He tosses his gunbelt over his shoulder and, in a cold sweat, staggers off in that direction, stumbling, falling, picking himself up and carrying on. The poison’s getting to him. Sometimes the town is out there, sometimes it isn’t. He sees a soft quilted bunk that fades into sagebrush when he reaches it, a watering hole which turns into a dry gully when he falls into it, mouth open, face in the sand.

  Lying there, grit in his teeth, he seems to recollect—it’s sort of a memory and it sort of happens—accompanying a wagon train of emigrants heading west across the dusty plains. He might have been a hired gun or a scout or he might himself be one of the pioneers, it’s not clear, but their passage takes them through endless black acres of burnt-out prairie grass, dust churned up by the wooden wheels so thick wet bandannas tied over their faces cannot filter it out (he can taste it, coating his tongue, clogging his throat), the teams of oxen plodding through it all, their hickory yokes squeaking, chains rattling, and there’s the tinkling clatter of tinware, the shriek of ungreased axles, the squalling of children; he can hear all this. Storms suddenly rise up out of nowhere and sweep wrathfully down upon them, lightning bolts slamming the ground around them like electrical cannonballs, and then as quickly they sweep away again, leaving the land as hot and dusty as if no rain had passed.

  In the calm after one such storm, just as they are crawling out from under the oiled canvases of their wagons, they are attacked by a band of screaming wild Indians on horseback, emerging as though out of the vanishing storm itself, their naked bodies striped head to toe with red and black paint, their long ebon hair floating to the wind, bald eagles’ feathers on their heads and strips of flayed antelope skin and white feathery skunks’ tails strung to their knees and elbows—they make a sight to see, though looking can get a person turned into a human pincushion. Already the settlers are falling—men, women, and children, their horses and oxen, too—with arrows through their throats, chests, and eyeballs. He seems to recognize them all but doesn’t know them, except for that beautiful widow woman in black, the schoolmarm from the town up ahead, moving among the fallen, treating their injuries, consoling the dying, keeping wounded and orphaned children distracted by teaching them their ABCs.

  He’s having a hard time thinking, he hurts so badly and feels so sick, but he manages somehow, hitching about on his one good leg, wincing with pain and nausea, to get all the covered wagons snaked round in a circle, tongues chained to rear axles, as a makeshift breastwork against the incessant hail of deadly arrows. The clumsy wagons teeter and tip and Dutch ovens, rocking chairs, and butter churns spill out like peace offerings, plows, skillets, chamber pots, and bucksaws, a proliferation of translated merchandise that dizzies him, or perhaps exemplifies the dizziness that bes
ets him. He and the remaining settlers knuckle down—he hears cavalry trumpets in the distance but they are stifled mid-toot, hope lost, they’re strictly on their own here—to the business of killing savages, which they accomplish in great numbers; popping them off their ponies is like swatting flies, but they keep coming at full gallop in wave after wave, blowing war whistles made of the bones of eagles’ wings and whooping and hollering like a troop of demons, all the while showering arrows on them so thick and fast the day turns dark, until soon there are no settlers left but himself, and he’s got an arrow piercing his inner thigh, a poisoned one by the swelling sensation of it, and his mouth is full of sand.

  He figures he’s done for, a feeling he might have had before, but then the schoolmarm passes, scowling down at him where he lies as though offended by what she sees. I’m sorry, mam, he says, or thinks he says, it’s all fading away. He knows he must be all swollen up and ugly looking down where the arrow’s sticking out, and he’s not sure his pants are all the way on. No matter. She produces a pair of scissors and cuts them away entirely, rips out the barbed arrow shaft like yanking a weed, then strips off one of her black stockings and ligatures his naked thigh with it, providing him just the briefest glimpse of a tender bare calf under her dark skirts, which makes him feel like crying, or maybe the pain does. She digs and snips at his wound with the scissors, then stoops to suck the venom out. The arrows are still whizzing overhead but they seem to be rising higher and higher until they are all but out of view, up where the hawks hover. He can hear her sucking and spitting, can see the tight dark bun of her hair bobbing between his thighs, but he cannot feel her lips on him, everything’s gone dead below the ligature. Not above it, though. Where her hand is. When she’s done, she cleans the wound with some warm liquid she’s produced from somewhere, salts it with a white powder the color of potash, and pours something like diluted ammonia down his gullet, making him gag. While he’s still spluttering, she shoves a long dull needle in so tender a place just above the wound that he cries out like one of those shrieking savages who have just passed by, injecting him with something from a bottle marked with a skull and crossbones. Hush now, she says, and she unties the ligature to use the stocking as a bandage, often brushing as she works the thing standing nearby, the only thing standing in fact for miles around. Before rising and leaving him there, she gazes at it sorrowfully for a moment, as if it’s about the saddest thing she’s ever seen.

  Sorry, mam. Caint hep thet. But I’m mighty obliged. She frowns down upon him, her thin unpainted lips pressed together. There is a tiny black beauty spot on her cheek, set there, it would seem, though it’s probably but a mole, to complement her long black dress. Fer whut yu done fer my laig, I mean.

  Did, she says sternly. I am obliged for what yu did for my leg.

  Yes’m. He closes his eyes. Yu’re welcum.

  When he opens them again, he finds himself stretched out in black satin and for a moment he thinks he’s in a coffin. No, no, I aint dead! he gasps, trying to rise.

  Shore yu aint, sheriff honey. The saloon chanteuse is sitting at her dressing table powdering her breasts. He falls back into the bed, feeling like he’s been kicked below by a horse. Beyond the open windows where lace curtains hang limply in the midday heat, he can hear creaking wagon wheels, the blacksmith’s hammer, booted feet treading wooden sidewalks, curses, whinnies, shouts, the occasional gunshot. These sounds seem aimed at him, of no more duration than his need of them, and maybe, in the way that towns talk to sheriffs, they are. Though it wuz tetch’n go fer a time, sweetie.

  I wuz havin a fearsome dream. Ifn it wuz a dream. Seemed so real.

  Looked purty arousin from whut I could see.

  I wuz layin out on the desert. Dyin. All alone. And some wolves come by. Whole pack of em.

  Dont tell me. They et yu up.

  I thought they wuz gonna. And I couldnt do nuthin about it. But they didnt. They jest sniffed at me and then they all lined up thar’n sucked whar I wuz hurt and lapped at my, y’know, my manly part, like cows at a salt licks. I wuz afeered ifn I moved they’d bite it off so I hadta lay stone still.

  Whenever sumthin like thet happens t’me, I git itchy all over and hafta sneeze sumthin awful.

  Thet werent exactly my problem.

  No, but not unlike. She winks at him in the mirror, hefts her breasts one at a time, rouges the tips. Well anyhow, thet explains how I found yu, all swoll up and ravin like yer brain wuz cracked, buckskins cut t’ribbons and peed on by some filthy animule, musta been them wolves. Yu wuz a real morbid spectacle, dearie; the whole town lined up t’witness yu when I brung yu in.

  I dont member none a thet.

  Course yu dont. Yu wuz stock outa yer haidbone. But outa yer pants too and cuter’n a chipmunk. I shooed the buzzards off and throwed yer dazzlin carkiss over the rump of my hoss and brung yu right down main street; we done a whole parade, flags flyin, fireworks, brass band’n all, it wuz more fun than a injun roast. Whut wuz most byootyful, though, wuz when yu ast me t’marry yu.

  When I whut—?

  Course, bein so recently widdered, I hadta think about it fer a minnit or two—

  Belle! We aint hitched—-?!

  Well not yet, darlin, but the preacher’s due here any second. I bought myself some special underbritches fer the occasion yu’re jest gonna love. I’d show em to yu, but it’s bad luck t’see yer bride’s—

  But, Belle, I caint do thet! It—it—whut kin I say?—it dont go with the job!

  Fiddlesticks. I’ll git yu a new job. Yu kin play the pianner.

  I dont know how t’play the pianner.

  I’ll larn yu.

  I dont wanta be larnt. She brings her ruby-tipped breasts over for him to kiss. He turns his head away. Belle, dammit, this aint right, I jest aint the settlin-down kind.

  Yu’ll git used to it, lovey. Anyways it’s too late, yu done promised.

  But yu said yerself I wuznt right in the haid.

  Dont matter none, promise is a promise. Breakin one mebbe aint a capital offense around here, but the punishment fer it aint a purty thing t’watch. She leans over him and tickles his ear with one of her painted nipples. Now c’mon, handsome, give em a little smack. From now on, they’re all yer’n. Or mostly all yer’n.

  There’s a rap at the door. It’s open! shouts Belle, still bent over him with a pap in his ear, and in comes a lanky bald man with a goatee, one eye sewed shut by an ugly scar, a monocle in the other, bowler and Bible clasped at his crotch, and his collar turned backwards. Howdy do, dear friends, he says. I’m here t’hack up the connubial rites.

  We’re nearly almost ready, revrend, soon’s I’ve smeared on my fixins.

  Other townsfolk crowd in through the doorway. Hey, Belle! We decked it all out like yu ast! It’s lookin wondrous conjugular down thar!

  Thanks, boys! They’s heaps a vittles, and the drinks’re on me’n the sheriff t’day! I need a pair a yu t’hep me git my dearly betrothed down thar as he aint too ambulatory, but the resta yu kin go down and git started!

  Yippee! they shout, throwing their hats in the air and clattering back down the stairs, the preacher whooping right along with them.

  A squint-eyed old fellow with a foot-long beard and a pegleg stays behind with a thinly mustachioed rustic in a crumpled tophat, and while Belle goes back to her dressing table to pin the ruby in her cheek, they come over to haul him out of the bed.

  Now wait up, fellers, I think we should probly oughter hole off jest a bit, he says. I caint even stand proper yet.

  Thet’s jest cuz yu’re nervous, sheriff, says the top-hatted oaf as they drag him out from under the quilts and coverlets. The fellow has one arm in a sling or else not there at all, and his thread of a mustache, he sees, is branded on. Everbody’s nervous on his weddin day.

  Belle, I know yu’re wantin t’git right at it, says the pegleg, but shouldnt he have some pants on? Anyhow leastways fer the cerymonies? He’s desprit unsightly down thar, it kinder turns my stomach.


  I aint finished patchin em up, says the chanteuse, wiggling her hips into a velvet and silk wedding gown. And they stink purty bad. He’ll hafta go like he is.

  Well aint yu at least got a ole skirt or sumthin t’hide him in?

  I aint wearin no skirt, he says flatly.

  And I aint marryin no cowboy in one neither, says Belle, buttoning up.

  Awright, gimme it then, he says. I’ll wear it.

  How about yer ole pink bloomers, Belle? Them ole-fashion long-laigged ones with the gap in the back?

  Shore. Dont know ifn they’re clean or not, but they’re backa the dressin screen. They dump him back on the bed and the old-timer clumps over there, his pegleg hammering the wooden floor as if trying to split the boards.

  The one-armed yokel goes to help Belle with her buttons, so he pulls himself to the edge of the bed, intending to throw himself off. Can’t crawl very far, sore as he is, but he figures he just might make it to the open window and take his chances out it.

  He figures wrong. Whoa thar, sheriff, says the lout with the branded lip, and he strolls back casually and with his single arm flips him over and ropes his wrists behind his back all in one easy motion. No need t’git all ramparageous. Tyin the knot aint the end a the world.