Lunatics, Lovers and Poets

by Daniel Hahn

  For example: ‘Death Over an Egg’. If the actor who played Ross Woods in that scene walked into the Stratford Hotel one morning at about nine o’clock and told the waitress: ‘Gimme an egg, why don’t ya?’

  Then I – usually, at that moment, cleaning the floor of the corridor behind the scene – had to run upstairs and wake Bean Belly Smith, so that he’d come straight down, still in his pyjamas, sit down at an empty table, and also order an egg. Then, he’d start cursing Ross Woods loudly and aggressively, across the room, having being told by the waitress that Woods had just ordered the last egg in the hotel kitchen.

  Putting his knife and fork down on his empty plate, Ross Woods would leave his table silently, go upstairs to his room to fetch his pistol, come down again and shoot – but miss – Bean Belly Smith from the doorway. Woods would then be hit by a bullet from Smith’s pistol, which would send him staggering – another stream of curses – until he fell, sometimes at the bottom of the stairs, sometimes on a table, sometimes on the floor. And so ended ‘Death Over an Egg’.

  After that, we could all get on with our regular tasks until some other phrase, spoken in the post office or the dry goods store, would spark off ‘Just One Diamond’ or ‘The Hanging of Arkansas Black’ or any other of the seven official re-enactment scenes. And so our days unfolded, almost always happily.

  My children’s favourite scene was ‘Lynched on the Porch’, in which the cowboys Sandy King and Russian Bill were the victims of a lynching. The re-enactment opened when our sheriff and hangman, Dangerous Dan Tucker, found out that Sandy King and Russian Bill had rustled some of his cattle. Dangerous Dan Tucker was famous for his ruthlessness, and his hatred of Apaches, Mexicans and foreign folk in general. I kept well away from him, just in case there was something of the character in the actor.

  On discovering that his cattle had been stolen, Dangerous Dan Tucker organised a ‘vigilance committee’, composed solely of himself and his ass-licker sidekick, the bartender Jim Caroll. After the mock trial, the two of them took the cattle thieves across the street, where the nooses were strung from the porch. Before the hanging, King famously asked for a drink of water to wet his throat, which, he claimed, was dry from so much talking to save his life.

  Once the two cowboys had been hanged, the four youngsters in the town – my sons Teresio and Victor Baca, the wild John Wray, son of a German miner and the waitress at the Stratford Hotel, and Nimmi, the beautiful, captive Apache girl who lived as a kind of slave with Dangerous Dan – came running out from their respective homes. They planted themselves in front of the bodies of Sandy King and Russian Bill and started to throw stones and sand at them. The kids were pitiless. Some afternoons, I watched them from my window. Backlit by the long rays of the setting sun, those four savage, insolent children looked beautiful as they laughed, and hollered, and threw golden handfuls of dirt at the two corpses dangling in the air.

  In the beginning, we all used to wait diligently for the cues to our respective scenes. On some days, we even spent hours repeating the same scene over and over, dozens of times, with minor variations, in order to internalise and perfect them. But as the months passed, some actors began to tire of the routine. They perhaps despised the burdensome repetitiveness of their everyday lives, the feeling they were following a circular track that always led back to the same small, identical actions. One morning, in September, for example, the waitress at the Stratford actually stabbed poor Ross Woods with a blunt knife when, newly resurrected from his fourth straight death, he turned to her and muttered once again, ‘Gimme an egg, why don’t ya?’

  I, however, never tired of our re-enactments. With time, I learned to love and master my scenes, putting all the devotion and care into them that our town, our Shakespeare, deserved. We were, it seemed to me, like an old-time circus troupe, except that the world came to us instead of us going to the world. Our lives were free and unconstrained: they were far away from all those castrating institutions, far from the servitude to unnecessary technology, and free from the weight of having to act as ourselves. They were far, also, from that country out there, which was always advancing on its unforgiving path toward progress and power; far from that cruel and loveless country beyond the last little shack in our town. Sincere friendships began to grow between some of the actors: my husband Juan and Doc Holliday spent almost every day together, and the Government Contractor, who lived a few houses down from us, soon joined them. Nimmi, the Apache girl – I later learned she was not Apache, but the first-generation immigrant daughter of a Tamil family, and had grown up in Tulsa, Oklahoma – started to visit me each morning. We’d drink a cup of milky coffee together and eat a slice of bread and butter in silence, while my sons were over at the corrals or cleaning out the chicken hutch in the backyard. Afterwards, she’d help me pick the grubs out of the beans and lentils, and I’d help her grind the nuts and acacia seeds we later mixed to make bread.

  Dangerous Dan and Doc Holliday had a particularly gory confrontation with the famous Wild West malefactor Billy the Kid, who used to return to Shakespeare from time to time to torment us all. At sundown, every now and again, Billy the Kid would kick open the door of our cabin, looking for his enemy, Doc Holliday. With his thumbs tucked into his gun belt, he’d stand in the middle of our dining room, looking down on us from his short but dignified stature, interrupting our supper. Furious at not finding Doc Holliday, he’d take Juan Baca out of the cabin at gunpoint and tie him to the hitching post outside the sheriff’s office, where some afternoons – if no one had got around to cutting them down – the tired bodies of Sandy King and Russian Bill were still hanging. After tying Juan Baca to the post, Billy the Kid would return to the cabin, take me hostage, march me to a room in the Stratford Hotel and rape me.

  The rape, of course, didn’t happen, and our scene together ended when he pushed me, or sometimes dragged me by the hair, into what served as one of our props rooms in the hotel. We had to wait ten or fifteen minutes there, after which I returned to the cabin, and he set out to look for Doc Holliday, buttoning up his fly as he went. He’d find Doc in the central square, and attempt – without success – to kill him, before galloping back towards Lordsburg in the dark, dodging the erratic gunfire of Dangerous Dan, who would have just come out of the sheriff’s office, always at least a bit tipsy, his revolver in hand.

  Billy the Kid carried himself with an air of calm assurance. He had a way of being distant, but didn’t seem indifferent or insensible to the world. More than fearsome, he looked dangerously vulnerable, like those American teenagers who one fine day suddenly open fire on their classmates without anyone ever having expected that, or anything else, from them. He had a desert-hard face, furrowed by the sun and tobacco smoke, in which a pair of blue eyes and a gaze of almost bovine docility seemed out of place. He preferred Mexican hats to the cowboy variety, had killed his first victim at the age of seventeen, survived Apache raids, hunted buffalo and broken out of jail twice; he was an excellent dancer, had a universally disarming sense of humour, and spoke Spanish. His last words, in fact, were spoken in that language: on 14 July 1881, in the dark kitchen in which his murderer was waiting for him, he asked, ‘Quién es, quién es?’ before receiving a fatal shot in the chest. Of all the characters in Shakespeare, Billy the Kid was undoubtedly the most complex, the saddest, and something in his blue eyes silently pleaded for salvation.

  The dry, rasping heat of summer passed and the redeeming October winds began to blow. There was just under three months left to the end of the season. Nimmi, the false Apache girl, was by then spending the whole day with me in the cabin, as far as possible from Dangerous Dan, whom she despised more and more with each passing day. Ross Woods had jumped ship, fed up of the Stratford waitress’s increasingly venomous invectives. The fainthearted Doc Holliday had still not got his much-sought-for job offer in California – not as Mickey Mouse, nor Shrek, nor even a pink hairy monster from a movie only my children have seen and would remember. Every day, for want of a bet
ter idea, Doc Holliday – abetted by Juan Baca, and with waning resolution – would kill the Government Contractor, who came to claim the cow we kept in the corral behind the cabin. It was a long, dispassionate shoot-out, after which the murderers dragged their victim up a hill to the west of town, where they dug a pit and buried him. So ended the scene ‘Death of a Government Contractor’.

  A few minutes later, the murdered Contractor would rise up from his grave, first poking his head above the ground to check there were no tourists around to witness the change of scene. It was an unnecessary precaution because hardly anyone ever visited us except lost couples, occasional busloads of pensioners, or the odd group of Mexican or Central American migrants who had crossed the border at Douglas or El Paso and strayed. Having ensured that no one was looking, the Contractor would start off downhill to where his wagon was tethered near the entrance to town. He’d brush the dust off his clothes, get into the wagon, take a turn around the town, pull up behind a clump of bushes and finally enter his house. That’s where Juan and Doc Holliday would find him. Together, the three would drink the various pints of bourbon that, every night, left them lying like newly felled trees wherever they dropped.

  For my part, after a few months of playing the scene with Billy the Kid, I began to await his irruption into our cabin with nervous anticipation. The afternoons when he failed to turn up, and the sun had already begun to set behind the bare hillside outside my kitchen window, seemed grey and pathetic. I resented his ever more frequent absences to the point of considering writing to the company to complain about his apparent disinterest in his work and neglect of his responsibilities. My dislike of the vile Dangerous Dan also increased, since it was his intimidations that, when you came down to it, drove Billy the Kid out of Shakespeare on the odd occasions he did appear.

  I came up with a plan. It occurred to me that if, one day, with Nimmi’s discreet complicity, I could manage to ensure that the lynching of Sandy King and Russian Bill preceded the irruption of Billy the Kid, and my later kidnapping, by a few minutes, and that this scene almost immediately preceded the Contractor’s, I could perhaps extend my time with Billy the Kid in the Stratford Hotel long enough for us to consummate our – until then unfinished – scene together. It was a scheme more complicated than complex, but it was possible.

  Juan Baca would be tied to the hitching post outside the sheriff’s office, and the children would arrive to throw stones and dirt at Sandy King and Russian Bill. As Juan wouldn’t be in the cabin when the Government Contractor came to claim our cow, his knocks on our door would receive no answer. Doc Holliday would come round the back of the cabin and, noting that Juan wasn’t there, would have to run to untie him, maybe dodging the stones the children would then be throwing at the freshly lynched bodies of Sandy King and Russian Bill. Only then could the two of them – Doc Holliday and Juan – return to the cabin and get in through the back door, behind the Contractor’s back. Nimmi, in the meanwhile, would be taking care of the drunken Dangerous Dan.

  By that time, Billy the Kid and I would have been alone for a good while in the hotel room.

  The day came in the middle of December. It was a cold but radiant afternoon. For the first time in weeks, a busload of pensioners had arrived in Shakespeare from Silver City, and their presence had us all on edge.

  The sun was going down, and Juan Baca and Doc Holliday were dodging stones outside the sheriff’s office. Unaccustomed to visitors, and spurred on by the applause and laughter from their audience, instead of hurrying on to the scene with the Contractor – who was already waiting for them at the cabin – they lingered there even longer than I had calculated.

  Billy the Kid and I had been in the room for a few minutes, looking out the window onto the main square. To make conversation, and keep him entertained, I suggested a riddle: a cowboy goes into a saloon, he’s soaked through. He asks for a glass of water, and the bartender hands him a pistol. The cowboy says ‘Thank you’ and leaves the saloon. Why?

  Billy looked at me the way a cow would contemplate a fly circling around it and said:

  ‘The cowboy had the hiccups. Is that the best you can do, honey?’

  I raised my eyebrows: I was lost for words. A change of strategy was in order. I said I was worried that if we went out of the room straight away, it would be too early to do the scene with Doc Holliday, and he’d have to mooch around the town aimlessly, waiting for the Contractor to be buried on the hilltop. That seemed to convince him to stay put. We agreed that it wouldn’t be a good idea to leave the props room until the next soporific skirmish between Juan, Doc Holliday and the Contractor had come to a close, and the burial had taken place; it would then be at least twenty or thirty minutes until Holliday would be free for the dire scene in which he and Dangerous Dan run Billy the Kid out of Shakespeare.

  ‘What are you thinking about, Billy?’ I asked.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I said what are you thinking about.’

  He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and said nothing, just turned his gaze back to the window onto the main square, where Juan Baca and Doc Holliday were basking in the heartfelt applause, doing a turn that wasn’t in our script: a ridiculous routine, like something circus clowns would invent, involving acrobatics, hat throwing and shaking hands with the audience. In the meanwhile, behind them, the four children from the town – John, Nimmi, Teresio and Victor – were tying Dangerous Dan to the hitching post outside the sheriff’s office. The latter must have been drunk because, instead of resisting, he went quietly along with it. We watched Nimmi slap him a couple of times, and put a heavy stone on the top of his head, forcing him to balance it there. He let it fall. She slapped him again and placed the stone back on his head. Doc Holliday then disappeared inside the sheriff’s office for a few minutes and reappeared wearing a Mickey Mouse costume, firing his revolver into the air. The audience erupted into screams and roars of laughter.

  Finally, Billy spoke. Without taking his eyes from the window, his face stern and expressionless, he said:

  ‘My knife’s sharp, honey.’

  I wasn’t sure if he meant that literally or was inciting me to do something. I thought about undoing the buttons of his waistcoat and his fly, and pulling down the long johns the men in Shakespeare wore under their woollen trousers. I’d never raped a man, much less a man of Billy the Kid’s legendary proportions. Rumour had it that despite his short stature, his penis was as fat as an eggplant. The thought of it! I didn’t know where to begin.

  Sure that our signal to leave the room would be some time in coming, we dragged two chairs out from a corner, where they were jumbled together with a couple of brooms, a hatchet, coils of rope, a bunch of artificial flowers and a suitcase, and sat down facing each other. He lit a cigarette and I stretched one leg, allowing the side of my unshod instep to rest on his worn boot. As he didn’t move an inch, I dared to slide my other foot towards him and rested it on the same boot. He watched me, maybe with indifference. I asked for a drag on his cigarette and when he held it out to me, I caught his wrist and leaned forward to put my lips to its tip. I inhaled deeply, without releasing his wrist, and fought down the desire to cough. I also fought down the suspicion that my new role as a slut was beyond my acting skills. Then, he ran a finger along the low neckline of my dress. With that gesture, I regained my confidence and sense of purpose. I stood up, pulling down the long underwear I wore under my skirt, and sat astride him, face to face. He let his cigarette fall, ground it under the sole of his boot, and put his hands around my hips.

  ‘I’m your Huckleberry Finn,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we have a spelling bee?’

  I didn’t understand the reference, or the question, but I opened his fly and ran my fingers along the stiff cloth of his long johns until I found the slit through which the tip of his penis poked, living up to its fine reputation. I gave him a long kiss that tasted of pure salt. Then I went on kissing his neck and the lobes of his ears, continuing to move my fingers between the t
ip of his penis and the wrinkly folds of his testicles. Outside, a gust of laughter rose from the crowd, followed by a rush of applause and whistles.

  I thought that Doc Holliday and Juan Baca must finally be walking towards the cabin to meet the Government Contractor. Or perhaps the children were still holding Dangerous Dan hostage, and were playing their version of William Tell with him – instead of apples on his head, stones. Suddenly, gunshots rang out, and the erection that was just beginning to swell deflated between my hands like a burst balloon.

  ‘Have they killed the Government Contractor?’ he asked solemnly, perhaps worried.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I replied, trying to squeeze my thighs against his hips.

  ‘Holliday’s gonna catch me if I don’t get to my horse on time.’

  ‘They have to bury the Contractor first,’ I said, and tried to extract his pistol, which was digging into my right thigh. He put a hand to his holster.

  ‘I’m not afraid to die like a man, fighting, but I wouldn’t like to be killed like a dog, unarmed,’ he said.

  I laughed, unsure if anything he said was meant to be taken seriously, or if he was really incapable of speaking to me as if we were two normal adults who are simply about to fornicate.

  ‘You know, at least two hundred men have been killed in Lincoln County,’ he went on, ‘but I didn’t kill all of them. People thought me bad before, but if ever I should get free, I’ll let them know what bad means.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, tetchily.

  ‘People thought me bad before, but if ever I should get free, I’ll let them know what bad means,’ he repeated.

  ‘What are you saying, Billy?’

  ‘I’m not afraid to die like a man, fighting, but I wouldn’t like to be killed like a dog, unarmed,’ he said again.

  ‘Needle stuck?’ I asked, standing to put my underwear back on.