“Where is the ringleader?”
Oscar pointed.
“In Fitzgerald’s. But his men are now scattered all throughout the village.”
“And do you not travel with an entourage?” I asked. “You, with your new fame? Bodyguards, and whatnot?”
“In a free country,” Oscar said, laughing jollily, and, in retrospect, unfunnily, “one cannot live without slaves, and I have slaves! — black, yellow and white, and some blackish-yellow, and some yellowish-white!”
“And where are they, now?”
Oscar was in fact traveling across the American West on a talking tour. He had discovered our cowpoke subculture of frontier Shakespeare performances in saloon bars, billiard halls, schoolrooms, hotel ballrooms and upon occasion the stump of a giant redwood tree. After his series of successful lectures in California and before moving along to Utah, he decided to touch down briefly in Arizona to review Yuma’s production of King John for the London Figaro.[]
But because this visit was spontaneous, he had left his entourage behind, and so Oscar was alone, and hence we were weak and vulnerable, trapped in a tunnel constructed of barrels and crates and sacks of grain, and beneath a hailstorm of bullets.
“That is a shame,” I said. “We could use their help.”
One of the rooftop gunmen in the east shot twice in our direction; one bullet lodged in a barrel, and one bullet lodged in the wall behind us, wood splintered over our heads. Just to shoot, just to pass the time.
At length, Oscar nodded to me. He brushed his long brown hair out of his eyes, we kicked over the barrels, and together we sprinted across Main Street; while the village absolutely exploded with gunfire, we had the element of surprise in our favor, and the resultant blitzkrieg was inaccurate and disorganized, albeit awe-inspiring. The onslaught of bullets whizzing through town brought Yuma a breeze that felt like Central Park in the spring.
Across the street, we kicked in the door to the depot and blacksmith shop, crashed into a storeroom filled with bellows, a water trough, shovels, tongs, rakes, pokers, anvils, sledges, swages, cutters, chisels, and packages and letters readied for delivery, and then through the side door and up the stairs to the roof, where we surprised and disarmed two gunmen and kicked them over the edge. They lay prone on the street, but likely alive. Gunfire resumed from the roof of Gerson’s store across the street, and we ducked and rolled, then leapt from the flat roof of the depot and blacksmith shop to the flat roof of Martin’s Drugstore, then we leapt across a narrow alleyway to the tented roof of Perry’s Saloon and Courthouse, upon which we both lost our balance and slid, Oscar head-first, I feet-first, the shingles splintering and cracking beneath us, till we landed with two thuds beside Brimley’s little house behind the saloon, were on our feet within a moment, scrambled over the railroad tracks, across the cemetery grounds, and ducked in the alley behind the sign for Ben Jones Dance Hall, bullets lodged in the beams and planks and exploded in the soft white adobe walls of Yuma’s news depot and Palmer & Baine’s Wagon Shop.
I jumped out from behind the sign, and I shot as well as I could, and then I took cover again behind the sign. I heard a goonish grunt and goonish curse, and so I figured I hit a goon, and I just hoped he would crawl away somewhere to heal. I jumped out again, shot again, and eventually the shooting subsided.
Four gunmen stepped out of the Mail Depot and Blacksmith Shop, just stood out in the street, holding their pistols, taunting Oscar.
You know the things they said. You know the names they called him.
All four of them looked the same. Muscled, unwashed. Greasy hair, untidy beards, holes in their trousers. Slanty, gap-toothed smirks.
“Well,” Oscar said to me. “I guess I’ve had enough of this.”
And he pulled out his gun, a small derringer pocket pistol, and he stepped out into the street and they shot at him and missed, and he shot at them and didn’t miss.
The boy had good aim. I did not know where he learned this skill, but I imagine that in Oxford, shooting was highly prized, for grouse hunting or whatever it was weekending fancy lads were expected to hunt in Queen Victoria’s England.
One tough was apparently still alive, and he stood to run off, but Oscar sprinted to the center of the street, knocked him cold with a right to the side of the head, pried his peacemaker from the tough’s fingertips, then kicked him into the mud. (Oscar had also been a boxer at Oxford.) Another tough emerged from the general store, behind Oscar, where neither he nor I could see, but I felt the presence of my ghosts. A .45 flew from my holster into my left hand, and I spun about — involuntary-like — and the gun discharged. Without really knowing what had happened, I shot him in the hand, and he dropped his gun, and then I shot him in the leg when he started to run away, and he just lay there in the middle of the street moaning and cursing.
A grateful Oscar swept his foppish hat off his head and bowed, near-curtsied, in my direction. I wished that he hadn’t done that, but in an almost empty village, I figured it didn’t much matter what Oscar did.
We found one straggler still in Fitzgerald’s store, and we locked him in the village jail.
My ghosts departed. I thanked them, and I wished them well.
“I have to learn to stay away from this sort of place,” Oscar said, momentarily contemplative. Then, cheerfully, he added, “The performance of King John in the saloon begins in five minutes!”
So we crossed 2nd Street and then crossed 1st Street and then trudged along to the Yuma Exchange Saloon and Coral, Sheriff Tyner’s joint, which, like the village, was almost empty. Still, the show would go on. At the bar, Oscar ordered phlegm-cutter for himself, and a Monongahela for me, and he paid, which I appreciated.
He took a slug and ordered another.
“I am here to cut the American eagle’s barbaric claws with the scissors of culture!” he confided breathlessly. “This is the absolutely uttermost end of the great world. Grey, gaunt desolate plains as colorless as wasteland by the sea.”
“You think this is grey,” I began, thinking of Hell, but Oscar interrupted me.
“Its great sympathetic electric people,” he shouted, “girls very lovely, men simple and intellectual; big-booted, red-shirted, yellow-bearded and delightful ruffians treat me as a young god.”
Oscar loved America, and, for the most part, America loved Oscar as much as America could possibly love Oscar, except from time to time.
After a while, the performance of King John began, which I understand is one of Shakespeare’s lesser theatricals. Still, he enjoyed himself, my friend Oscar, watching Shakespeare in the wilderness. Early in the show, King John, who was played by an actor who called himself Texas Harry Eytinge,[] turned to the audience and broke the fourth wall — just like Groucho, in Animal Crackers! — when he said, “And sullen presage of your own decay/ An honorable conduct let him have: Pembroke, look to 't. Farewell, Chatillon,” and Oscar poked me in the ribs (it hurt) and chortled loudly, “Sullen presage of your own decay, indeed!” and then he shouted, chortling, “Farewell, Chatillon!” while giving a little salute. Later in the play, a character whose name was, apparently, “Bastard,” remarked, “if my legs were two such riding-rods, my arms such eel-skins stuff'd, my face so thin that in mine ear I durst not stick a rose lest men should say Look, where three-farthings goes!” and Oscar outright squealed with incomprehensible delight, perhaps at the idea of a man named “Bastard” sticking a rose in his own ear, which I allow could be funny, in certain circumstances.
“This play is bad,” I remarked, and Oscar ignored me.
Oscar was one of those fellows who thinks everything that Shakespeare ever muttered is both delightful and profound. Though I appreciated the very inexpensive booze, I didn’t much enjoy or understand the play, and so I was grateful when the light from the saloon’s window darkened from a great shadow across the sky, a few locals on Main Street screamed, and we all ran outside to see what the hubbub was about.
The Main Street was indeed havoc
-ridden; the various Yumans neither watching King John nor up in the mountains hunting for the fugitives had tentatively concluded that the coast was clear after the cessation of gunfire, but were now screaming and running for cover. I shaded my eyes with my left hand and looked to the sky, where I could clearly discern some kind of great reptile heading in the direction of Yuma, a creature with hundreds of scales on its body, the head of a camel, a demon’s eyes, a cow’s ears, antlers like a deer, the neck of a snake, a clam’s belly, a tiger’s paws and an eagle’s claws.
I sighed with some relief, and I smiled at Oscar, who stood beside me.
“Just a dragon,” I said. “Nothing to worry about.”
I’d been around long enough to know not to be afeared of dragons. Especially when the alternative is a frontier performance of King John starring Texas Harry Eytinge.
Not the largest dragon I could have imagined, but large enough for one rider, or even two or three.
The crowd backed up as the great beast descended, and billows of dust filled the air. The dragon landed in the center of the village with a grunt, and I was delighted and only slightly surprised to find that I recognized the rider well.
Hester hopped from the dragon’s back, and she stretched. (As I would learn shortly, cross-Atlantic dragon rides are hell on the back and the ass.)
Hester Smith, as beautiful and tough as I remembered her.
“Watt,” she said, and she smiled. “For years, I feared you were dead.”
She tossed her strong arms around my neck, and I kissed her.
“Not exactly dead,” I said. “Just in the Underworld, fighting the Soldiers of Hell.”
“How was that?” she asked.
I looked into her joyful grey-blue eyes.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I said.
“I saw you, as a ghost, you know.”
“Not a ghost,” I said. “Not exactly.”
The oracle had told me many things. Always thank those who have wronged you before you drink from the waters of eternity. Pause twice before accepting the dispatches of a prince who is not a prince. When you dig a pit, there is never enough dirt to refill it. Do not trust the Princess of Time. It is better to be lost in a forest when riding on a horse than lost in a forest when walking on foot. Who is the master of a palace lit by fire?
And this: What is seen, can be invisible.
Madame Tang always said that they were all nonsense. But I took them for great wisdom. Madame Tang did too, it turns out, though she would never admit it to me.
“I have been waiting for you,” Hester said. “For some time, waiting for you in the city of Petach Tikvah, in the kingdom of Z’vulun. And Watt O’Hugh the Fourth would like to meet you. Are you ready to be a father, and more?”
I said I thought I was ready.
“Why Yuma?” I asked, and she said that its wide Main Street made for an excellent dragon landing pad. Plus, Jay Gould had engineered a jailbreak for to-day, so she knew the town would be rather empty.
“You always knew how to pilot a dragon?” I asked.
“Principle transportation in Z’vulun,” she replied. “Dragons and mules. So I had to learn.”
Hester and I climbed aboard the dragon.
The dragon snorted like a horse. I could feel its heartbeat. Its skin was hot from the Arizona sun.
We looked at Oscar, who loitered by the saloon door.
“Are you coming along, then?” Hester asked.
“Me?” Oscar asked.
“Unless you’re tired of riding on dragons,” Hester said.
This was funny, I thought.
“My childhood bedroom wall,” Oscar said, “was decorated with pictures of dragons, and peacock feathers. Dragons, who make their lairs in the black caverns of Egypt.”
Oscar’s face was white, his voice was faraway.
“This will be,” he said, “Viking-like and daring. I accept.”
“Do you have anything to declare?” she asked with a smile.
“Nothing but my genius,” Oscar replied, and he climbed aboard.
We flew west, into the Arizona sunset, and soon we were over California, and then nothing but the ocean was below us, and a clear star-filled night sky above us.
Chapter 42
Sometime after the events described in this book, I did meet the Falsturm, and I met him in a room of gold, as expected. He was not like a person. He stared always somewhere else, at the past that could have been, at the future he wanted to see come to pass. Always calculating; a creature of pure mathematics, nothing else anymore. His skin was like some chemical, wasting and growing. I spoke some words to him. He knows too much, the Falsturm. Hard to battle a creature who knows too much. I hope I don’t meet him again. I suppose I’ll tell the story in full someday, in a later volume of my Memoirs, should I find the energy and wherewithal.
The other day, I received a letter from Elias. He too is old now, but not as old as I am. Like me, he waits around for the end to come. His letter was full of ramblings.
Like this:
Every day I think about 1905. I think about Hester O’Hugh, you know, and I can still see her fighting the flying fanged devil-fish, in mid-air, a brave woman, thin and old and muscular, and full of rage and love. You had the blessing of many years with your wife. Was she real?
Remember that bounty hunter who fought with us in 1905, the one who were the son of the federal marshal who were assassinated, and who carried his father’s name? That bounty hunter were all right with me. He were heroic and brave, and he’d seen a lot, like you.
I thought that were the end of it, but really, it all started that day in 1905, when you brought us Magic. Or, anyway, something that seemed like Magic. I suppose, really, it were Science. But I am not smart enough to understand it. So I call it Magic.
Decades later, I still think of them every day: you, that bounty hunter, Madame Tang. Hester. And that Chinaman, who knew he would die, but who fought for us anyway. He killed so many Eyebrows, before he were felled. We knew he would die, but we didn’t know he would die that terrible way, cradled in his sons’ arms, the battle screaming around him.
There’s mere death, and then there’s … DEATH!
We are not all equal on the day we call. May we all be lucky enough to warrant mere death.
Madame Tang told him that he was Sealed in the Book, and that he would die that very day, no matter what he chose to do, that it didn’t matter whether he ran or fought, that his only choice was between death as a hero or death as a coward. Did you know that this was a lie? Did Lady Amalie know it was a lie? How many of you bastards were in on it?
I wondered for years why Madame Tang had to lie to Master Yu. In 1905, he was brave and he was helpful, and he would kill many men, but he didn't single-handedly win the battle. Of course, in 1928, I woke up in the middle of the night, and it all became clear. He must have killed someone essential — someone who had to be killed, someone deadly to our future, who otherwise would not have died. It's the burden of being Madame Tang, making such calculations. Still, this was no excuse.
I wonder what he would have done [the letter continued], had he known the God’s-honest. I wonder if he would have chosen to stay ever-young with Li-Ling at Lady Amalie’s inn, or if he would have yet joined us in battle in 1905. The Chinaman could have lived at the little inn for a thousand years or two thousand or what-have-you, listening to the music of those birds and that singing monkey, but instead he lived another few weeks, and what can you say it was really for, from your vantage point now? Did he accomplish anything, in the proverbial Scheme-of-Things?
A body really cannot trust any other body, not a soul. I cannot trust you, and you cannot trust me. Humans are critters, that’s all, and I am not at all certain that Reality is worth saving.
I think of Althea all the time; I still miss her. Of course, she has tougher, more complicated battles to fight, out in other scenarios, in Otherworlds, in times that don’t exist anymore. She abandoned me, you know
, flying into history on that Great Wave. I will never get over it, seeing her in 1905, for that moment, still young, still as-ever, with not even a word for old Elias, as I had become. I hope I will see her again someday, but I think that I won’t.
And blah blah blah, as the fella said.
The whole anthology of navel-fondling gibberish ended this way:
So the Hell with it all, or something or other like that, good riddance to the Shit-Hole; and, wishing you a Blessed Christmas and Glad Tidings, I remain your loyal friend and admirer,
Elias
Even if I choose to omit from these Memoirs my ill-fated silent screen “moving picture” career, there is still more to tell. My many reunions with Hester, across time and continents; the Sidonians’ bloody coup; the resurrected enemy from the far Winter North who swept down across the Dakotas for the first time in a thousand years to meet the Peking Indians’ renewed challenge; the Great War, in which the Sidonians joined the Central Powers against the Allied Powers, which included the partisan government of the United States, which lasted from 1914 to 1919, and which ended in a stalemate, with the Sidonians in Paris and Berlin; the Second American Civil War, which divided our country East to West; the Coney Island skirmish in 1911, with five hundred dead (in addition to all the other skirmishes of that terrible fratricide); Ch’ao-Hsing’s heroism, on that rainy day in France, in 1918; the Manhattan intrigue of 1927, which cratered buildings and killed hundreds of Knickerbockers; the efforts of Prometheus, Asiri and beautiful Demeter to promote the counterrevolution from a base in Brooklyn; the Z’vulunite War of Independence; the Great Sidonian Revolt, of course; and, I suppose, as our 1937 World teeters on the very brink of likely annihilation, and as many have lost Hope, my own last moments of life, a few short months from now, for what that is worth.
Watt O'Hugh and the Innocent Dead: Being the Third Part of the Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh the Third (The Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh the Third Book 3) Page 34