Weird, Weird West

by Harry Shannon

  "Hey, kid! Get those walking steaks the fuck out of my way."

  I licked my parched lips. "Won't be long, sir." I wasn't even certain I'd spoken the words aloud. I wobbled in the saddle and rubbed my dry eyes.

  He cocked his porcine head. "You want I should drive right through you?"

  That hit me wrong, but my natural tendency to defer to authority won out. "Like I said, we'll only be a couple of minutes, mister. Cows took off on us."

  Pissed, the driver got out of the car and stepped out onto the blacktop. Now, I was a teenaged kid and this was large, hulking man with a badly broken nose. His voice had an odd quality to it; a nasal snap. I didn't know it at the time, but the rumpled suit, shoulder holster and bad attitude screamed of the powerful Italian mob that ten years hence would be running casinos all over the state. He tried to walk, but his leg didn't work. He cursed softly and looked down.

  One of his fancy dress shoes was sticking to a pool of melting tar.

  "God fucking damn it!"

  "Best wait in your car," Injun Tom said, softly. "Must be maybe 105, 110 degrees out here, so the blacktop, it gets real sticky."

  The driver leaned against his car. An acidic smile writhed across his face. "I wasn't talking to you, nigger."

  "My apologies."

  "Accepted." The man snarled at me. "I said move those fucking cows. Now!"

  I swallowed dust. I was weaving like a cobra in the saddle and my mouth tasted foul. "Like I said, we're working on it."

  "You want I should shoot one?"

  "No, sir."

  "You want I should shoot you?"

  The air chilled, despite the weather. My stomach felt tight. I had a rifle with me, but knew I'd never get to it in time. I looked back over my shoulder; Old Injun Tom clicked his tongue and kept on moving the cattle, but his right hand drifted south and came to rest at the tip of his holstered 45.

  "Hey," the mobster called, "I changed my mind about that apology. Look at me when I'm talking to you, Tonto. Or are you a nigger?"

  I pulled back slightly in the reins and eased the mare away from the Ford. The driver pointed a finger at me. He was shaking with rage. "Kid, stay right where you are." He looked around, as if to make absolutely certain that he was in the middle of nowhere with no witnesses.

  And then he pulled his gun.

  I don't think I've ever seen a weapon that looked as big. It was like my mind did a motion picture close-up of that Colt. I edged my right hand around, but knew I was good as dead if I went for the carbine tied across the back of my saddle. I leaned forward, my vision going in and out of focus. Time just slid sideways and came to a halt. I was vaguely aware of the mare passing gas and dropping some road apples. I risked a peek back at Tom.

  "The boy is sick," Tom said.

  The stranger seethed. "Who gives a shit? Now, get down from there."

  Injun Tom smiled. He kept his hands in plain sight. He spoke gently, firmly. "You've had yourself a pretty bad couple of days, haven't you, mister." It was not a question. "You lost your job or your woman, or maybe it was both. And now you want to take that out on somebody else."

  "Shut up," the driver snarled. His voice blended with steam escaping from the strained radiator. His already wide, bloodshot eyes expanded a bit further. He didn't like feeling naked, or maybe just so obvious.

  "That your car?" When the mobster didn't answer, Tom lightly kicked Blackie and moved a few feet closer, on my left side. His intentions were obvious. He was trying to screen me off from the gun. "She's beautiful."

  The mobster tracked him with the gun. "It's a car."

  "No, sir, because you see, a man's car, it's sacred. Kind of like his horse used to be, back in the old days."

  "The fuck you talking about?"

  "You're not busted, son," Tom said, soothingly. "You still have the most important thing in the world."

  "A car?" The driver's eyebrows mated in puzzlement.

  "It's your steed and your prize possession," Tom said. "And anything that carries a man through the desert deserves food, water and above all a little respect. You shouldn't push her so hard."

  Blackie twitched his tail, and the mobster cocked his gun. "You know something?"

  "No, sir. What?"

  "I don't really like niggers, or red Indians, either." He looked at me and grinned nervously, like a possum eating red ants. "I also don't like kids. So I'm gonna do the both of you. Now get down off those horses."

  Injun Tom nodded my way. I dismounted, but put the mare's body in between me and this homicidal maniac. That allowed my right hand to slide to the butt of my rifle. I was almost too dizzy to stand, and sounds seemed far away. My heart was thumping in an irregular pattern and my stomach tightened into a knot. I wondered if I would have the time, or the balls, to try a sideways shot from such a bad angle and in such poor condition. I knew I'd have maybe one chance. If I blew it, Tom was likely dead.

  But then, we seemed likely dead anyway.

  The stranger seemed calm and in his element. He tracked us both well. "Come out from behind that horse, kid. Keep your hands in sight. Red man, you come down from there next."

  "Can't do that, mister," Tom said, quietly.

  The stranger glared, narrowed his eyes. He raised the gun. "Then I'll shoot you both dead from right here."

  "You don't really want to do that," Tom said. But Tom's voice didn't seem normal any more. It felt like I was underwater in a hot spring or something.

  The killer chuckled. His eyes narrowed. "Go fuck yourself."

  The man was going to fire. I swear to God. In fact, I'd about say he did, in that there was a spark of light and a puff of smoke, but something stayed his hand, or maybe replayed what happened and made it turn out some other way. I was damned sick from sunstroke, but that's what I saw and heard. I don't know what it was Injun Tom said next. The words were strange and so was the cadence, but it all sounded vaguely like the stuff we'd hear him chanting late at night, down by the bunk house. I sank to my knees and fell down sideways in the road. I may have passed out for a second. Someone was shrieking. I came to again.

  The gun just…melted. The mobster screamed and dropped what had now become a mass of molten metal. It fell down onto that sticky, festering blacktop and vanished into it. I blinked rapidly, my eyes flickered up and down, trying to make sense of what I was seeing: The driver, staring in horror at his blistered fingers, the gun sinking down into what had now become a molten pocket of hot, black lava; then the mobster babbling again because down there by his ankles was…more blacktop.

  He had no feet. They'd both dissolved.

  I gagged and shook my head. My temples pounded and the world rolled like liquid. The mobster grabbed at his scorched flesh. His screams grew more frantic as he tried to extricate himself. The horses whinnied in terror and Injun Tom and I let them back away. I closed my eyes, knew I was hallucinating. I opened them again.

  Now the man was in the bubbling blacktop up to his knees. I could smell roasting flesh and saw a glimpse of two of exposed bone. I looked at Injun Tom, but he sat impassively on the horse, watching the nightmare rapidly unfold. The Ford still sat firmly on the empty highway, somehow impervious to what was happening, perhaps because it was not cursed, nor flesh and blood. The driver grabbed for the door, hoping to pull himself back into the car. His legs sheared off at the thigh, leaving two raw stumps that were instantly cauterized.

  More shrieking followed. I vomited bile near the mare's right foot and passed out. I couldn't keep my head up any more. When things came back into focus, it looked like the man was into the molten black lava up to his chest. I heard an obscene, greedy slurp. It was sucking him down. He was pleading with his eyes and trying to use singed vocal chords that no longer had lungs to support them. The blacktop took one last gulp and he went under.

  "Tom?"

  "Hush," Injun Tom said. "It's not over."

  And a split second later the face emerged as the big man made one final attempt to escape. The flesh
was pink and blistered and the eyeballs had been poached to a ghastly, empty white. One more hideous sucking sound…And then he was gone.

  I passed out again, this time for what might have been minutes. When I woke up, Injun Tom was kneeling next to me in the shade of the mare. He raised his canteen. He drank deeply, handed it to me. "Easy, boy. Wash your mouth out and spit, then drink some of mine."

  I did so. "Tom, what the hell was that?"

  He cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean what the living hell just happened?"

  He chuckled. "You passed out, that's what happened."

  I tried to sit up, failed. "What ate that man, Tom?"

  "What man? Take it easy, kid. You got yourself a bad case of sunstroke. You're seeing things, that's all." Tom took his canteen back. "Can you handle the herd for a bit by your lonesome?"

  "Uh, I guess."

  "Take Blackie, too. Lead them up there into the grass and let them all feed for a bit. I'll catch up with you shortly."

  "But…"

  He shot me a look that told me to shut up, just do what I was told. I grabbed Blackie's reins and kneed my mare across the steaming hot highway, up onto dry land, without turning around. The horse followed without resistance, and so did the cattle. When we got to the edge of the grass below the grove of cherry trees, near the creek, I finally looked back. Injun Tom came walking back across that highway like he owned it. I sat in the shade and drank my fill. I had me a pinch of salt and the headache passed. Everything came into focus, and I began to figure I'd gone loco for a bit. Tom finally caught up to me. He buried his face in the cool, clear water. He murmured sweetly to Blackie and mounted up.

  "Tom, did I..."

  "What?"

  "Did I just imagine all that about some man who pulled a gun on us and about how the highway…swallowed him up, somehow?"

  He grinned. "I reckon you did. You feeling okay, now? Up to doing some work for a change?"

  "I'm fine, Tom. Please, tell me what just happened."

  Tom shook with laughter. Then he looked at me with an odd mixture of pity and determination. "Nothing happened, boy. It was just the heat. You didn't see anything, we never met anybody. Your mind made it up."

  "It seemed so real…"

  "I'm sure it did. Now pull yourself together. Let me hear you say it."

  "It never happened. It was the heat."

  "Damn straight." He didn't offer up another word all day. We worked our asses off, got the herd into a wide corral and locked the gate, then ate some jerky and rode back down the mountain. We crossed the hot highway, and I half expected to see a dark Ford with silver trim, but there wasn't a car in sight, miles in any direction. I knew I'd just gotten loopy from the heat,, but to be honest I couldn't help but watch the horse's hooves every step of the way anyhow.

  Grandpa got home after sundown. I'd cleaned up some but didn't eat much supper. He commented on how poorly I was looking, and I told him I'd been sun stroked again during the drive. He chewed me out because I was all red and losing so much skin and then went off to bed.

  That never happened, it was the heat.

  Eventually, I opened the back door and stepped out onto the wooden porch. I could her crickets sawing symphonies and some grasshoppers clicking down by the dried up stream bed. Now, normally I loved the desert at night, but this time the sky was squid ink and the smattering of stars seemed swollen with pus.

  I looked down the path that led to the bunkhouse, a million questions crowding my adolescent mind. Sparks flew high into the air like fireflies, and the faint sound of chanting stroked my ears.

  That never happened. We never saw him. It was the heat, boy.

  After a time, I went back inside and tried to rest. Sure enough, a good night's sleep made the whole thing just a bad dream. The very next day, Injun Tom went back to work elsewhere. Grandpa set him to bailing hay and me to gathering eggs, slopping the hogs and all the regular chores. I sat there milking the cows, my stomach still flipping around like a fish on the dock, and came to believe I'd imagined the whole thing. Heat does funny things to the mind.

  Summer passed, and the season came to a close. It was time for me to go back down to Reno, where my no-account Daddy lived. I went looking for Tom to say goodbye, but he was nowhere to be found.

  "Don't worry on that," Grandpa said. "He comes and goes when he feels like it. He'll be here next year."

  But there never was a next year.

  My Grandpa had a stroke that winter while trying to shovel snow. The county and the state came down hard on the family over back taxes, so they sold the ranch the highest bidder. By spring, the land had been parceled off for smaller spreads and one of the largest cattle ranches in the state was gone.

  I returned once, when I was in my mid-twenties. I was headed for Korea, and wanted to see what was left before shipping out. It was fall, and the climate was more hospitable.

  It was hard to get there. I took a bus down from Salt Lake City, across the state line at Wendover, and down into Dry Wells. I talked an old man with a battered truck into taking me down into Starr Valley. We arrived by the old place in a cloud of dust, and he waited for me, humming Hank Williams songs to the radio. I walked up the dirt road to what had been my Grandpa's ranch.

  Picture me there in my dress blues, white hat under my arm, a grown man. I walk down the trail. Grandpa's house is still there. I don't bother the family that lives in it. I find the old bunk house, and it's all fallen in, now; roof beams scorched from some long-ago fire. All along I'm hearing, it never happened.

  The outhouse has completely collapsed. I pass it by, step around the fire pit Tom used to use. I kneel by the stream bed, thinking of Tom and wondering whatever happened to him; suddenly wondering again about that hot summer day when I thought he'd saved my life. I raise my eyes up, and I'll be damned if that automobile graveyard ain't still there. I would have thought it would be sold for parts by now. Maybe nobody has figured out yet who owns rights to the damned thing. I stretch and walk up the hill, my nostrils filled with the stench of buried animals. I stop in my tracks and a shudder runs through me.

  For right down in front is that dark, dusty 1940 Ford with the silver trim.

  THE RECKONING

  He woke up to the sound of far away spurs. Spooked, Wade Lee Hardin shivered in the dead man's clothes. They were stiff with frost, drenched with frozen blood, most of it not his own. It was time to move on. It was a harsh world, and full of reckoning. He'd slept sitting up, pistols ready, done without a fire for a host of nights, stayed alive by jawing down dried beef and a bit of stale biscuit

  At daylight he urged the gray on through the high desert boulders, staying off soft ground so as to avoid leaving tracks, always aiming west, slowing only to seek fresh water or a stretch of decent grass. Hardin found such a place near sundown that day, when he followed birds and happened on a stand of Cottonwoods. The gray mare nickered thirst, so Hardin he knew he'd likely found water to boot. For the first time that day, he allowed himself to look back, over his shoulder for a spell, one hand covering the squint.

  The horizon taunted him. A po' boy cooed in a fist of manzanita. Grasshoppers buzzed and clicked. The ridge line looked clear. No injuns hunkered dawn trying to pretend they was rocks, no Comanchero bastards trying to pretend they wasn't injuns. Most of all, no Mexicans. So far, so good.

  Hardin swung his aching legs over the gray, dropped heavily to the ground. He opened the Army canteen, poured into his palm and let the horse have the last of the tepid water. He could already hear the fresh supply humming along, the stream not too far off, a bit to the west and south. Figured, If got that much all to myself, and if we drink up and keep moving, played my hand pretty well. I'm a mean fucker for certain, and will maybe stay alive.

  It would be good to make Nevada. California, even better.

  During the day or night, whenever his eyes closed even for a moment, Hardin could hear the jangle of Mexican spurs, steadily approaching. They we
re always coming slowly, patiently, no hurry to them. The high pitched tinkling sound had a hollow quality, like an echo deep in the woods, something enough real yet also existing in another world. Then Hardin would smell the Mexican, whose friends called him Oso, The Bear. A skunk-stupid trapper, doomed to reek of scraped hides and gore, of cheap tequila and wet campfire farts. Smell him close by. Always as if the man were just upwind, in the shadows of the previous dusk or the coming dawn, grinning, squatting patiently out there next to a fist of dried sage.

  The goddamned fight had been over nothing, a look one of the overweight whores had flashed Hardin while still in Oso's lap. The Mexican had lashed out with his skinning knife. There was time to walk away. Or shoot, and that could have been the end of it, just plugging him for being dumb enough to pull a knife on a man with a gun, but the meanness had come over Hardin that night, a red cloud of rage that bedeviled him on occasion.

  And so there were words.

  The Mexican was drunk and he had the whore to contend with, the girl screaming and squirming, big ass sliding to the floor, slapping sawdust and wood with a comical thump. Hardin jumped closer. He grabbed the man's wrist and turned it, leaned all off his own weight forward, and stuck the Mex good with his own, sharp knife. And as if that weren't enough, pushed even harder, all the way to the right, until there came a mighty rip and it opened the man clean up like he was field dressing a deer. Those insides rolling out all purple and grey and splattering red. The girls screaming, the man's friends struggling to draw.

  Afterwards, seconds maybe, smoke and sweat and chaos. Making for the door, slapped by the wind, riding off with bullets shrieking past his frozen ears. Damn. That was not a right smart thing for a white man to do in a Mexican place, and it sure as shit pretty much killed that party.

  I got a darkness inside, Hardin thought. Be the death of me one day.

  The Mexican had friends. Family. Still, Hardin rode a long stretch without pause, hoping the incident would be forgotten. The sound of spurs always followed, sometimes down below near mooing cattle, sometimes above in the rocks, turning him back towards the border. He started to wonder if it was his mind making things up, getting even for some long-forgotten slight, the way his violence had a talent for erupting at exactly the wrong time and costing him safe haven.