Paradise Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I considered on it a bit.

  I thought about that contest money, and then I began to think about Ruggert again. I decided he had paid enough for what he done. Maybe that was a greater punishment than death, and I should be content with it.

  If I won that shooting contest I’d have plenty of money, and there could be more made with side bets. I could shorten my time in Deadwood considerably, making more money in one day than I might in months of working at the Gem, having to look over my shoulder all the time for Ruggert and his dingleberries. And if I won and left, and Ruggert followed, then a rifle shot on the wind needed no explanation to anyone.

  The shooting event was set a week from that night. It didn’t seem unrealistic to me to be able to avoid Ruggert for a week and take my chances at the shooting match, and it didn’t seriously occur to me I might lose. I figured on winning that event, leaving Deadwood with a solid purse that would get me and Win and Madame clear across the country. I was so confident, had I been a smidgen more confident, I’d have had to hire someone to walk alongside me and help carry my confidence.

  I pried open the wall space, checked in on my saved money, which I had stuffed in an old flour sack, pulled it out, and by lamplight counted what I had earned. There was nearly five hundred dollars in there. I added another twenty to it, keeping a few silver dollars in my pocket for needs. I was so excited about all that money, I counted it twice. I had earlier been overcome with the knowledge Ruggert was alive and still trying to kill me over seeing his wife’s butt (and where was she now?), but right then I was shot through with excitement and a kind of joy. I packed the money back in its hiding place, got myself ready for bed, the revolvers lying on either side of me as always, leaned over, and blew out the light.

  I was deep into a visit with Morpheus when I heard my door being beat on. I came awake immediately, the LeMat in my fist, the hammer cocked. I sat up, said, “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me,” Cullen said.

  “Goddamn, Cullen,” I said, sliding up to the door. It was so close in there I didn’t even have to stand, just rolled off my pallet and knee-walked to it, spoke at him through the wood as I unlocked it by sliding back the bar. “You drunk? You don’t live here anymore.”

  “No, I’m not drunk. Let me in.”

  He came in and sat in the spot where his bed used to be. I laid my pistol aside and lit the lamp. When I looked at him his mouth was hanging open and his lips was quivering. For a moment, I thought he had been shot or stabbed, but it was an injury of another kind.

  “I am on fire with love,” Cullen said.

  “You been in them damn dime novels again, ain’t you?”

  “I want to marry Wow,” he said.

  “Well, my glorious congratulations to you,” I said, and meant it.

  “We decided on it tonight. Just got through doing what we always do at night, and she said, ‘I think we ought to get married,’ and I said, ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ so we’re going to.”

  “Usually you don’t bed the woman until after you marry her,” I said.

  “And I suppose you have been chaste,” Cullen said.

  “I won’t answer on the grounds that you know the truth,” I said. “But I am glad for you. Very much so. Wow is a wonderful woman.”

  “She is,” he said. “I know she ain’t pretty, not like Win. Hell, not like a lot of women, including the China girl with the wooden leg. You know, I still don’t know her name, can’t get it right. Ring Ding. Ping Sing. Wing-a-ling. I don’t know. I think she gives me another name every time I see her. Hell, like I was saying, Wow ain’t a natural beauty, but she’s grown pretty to me. There’s the way she turns her head. She’s got that sparkle in her eye, and the way her teeth are so straight and white when she smiles; she spends time on them, Nat, and has taught me a lot about what she calls personal hygiene.”

  “You’re so in love you’re making me a little sick to my stomach,” I said, but I was grinning when I said it.

  “She’s got the best heart, but she’s tough, too, if she needs to be. And she can talk about things I didn’t know there was to talk about.”

  “She can do that,” I said, thinking about her telling me about Corn Foolish, as I still liked to call him.

  “Wow knows about ants and birds and diseases and doctoring. All kinds of shit I don’t give a damn about, but she can make me think I want to know about it, at least while she’s talking. She can sing like a goddamn bird, cook good, fix tasty things I would have never thought I’d eat. And she is really a treat in the night—but hell, you know that.”

  “Not the way you do, Cullen. I think she saved the real business for you. What me and her did was just dallying.”

  “You think so?” he said.

  “I do. When is the event to take place?”

  “We’re going to do it as a Chinese wedding among them Chinamen and the China girls. That’s what she wants, and I don’t mind. I’ll have some preacher say some Christian words over us to make it a well-tied knot from East to West.”

  “Again, Cullen,” I said, “I am glad for you, but now that I know of the great joy that has come to you, go home. I’m frazzled out and need to sleep.”

  “Sorry, Nat.”

  “Not at all. You come anytime, just as long as it isn’t at this time.”

  Cullen laughed. “I see you got the flyer.”

  He was looking at it lying on the floor by the bed. “I did. And I’m going to enter, and I’m going to win.”

  “Never doubted it,” he said.

  We shook hands. I gave him my best wishes again and let him out.

  Fact was, I got him out of there quicker than I would have under normal circumstances, for I was busting to tell him about Ruggert. Yet it didn’t seem right to spoil his big announcement with my news. Furthermore, Ruggert wasn’t hunting Cullen, may not have known about him at all.

  I lay there in the dark on my back staring at the ceiling I couldn’t see. I had been in a deep sleep, but knew I wouldn’t find that spot again, not tonight. I was too worked up over Ruggert and the shooting contest, and I was also happy for Cullen and Wow. It was an odd mix of feelings.

  19

  I kept a better watch on myself than I had before, was careful about corners and alleys and being out after dark except when I had to be for my jobs. I seen that fellow Bill said was called Golem from time to time. It wasn’t like he was trying to conceal himself from me, which due to his size would have been like trying to hide a buffalo in a small barn with all the lanterns lit.

  I tried to act like I didn’t know he was there, or just pretended he meant nothing to me, would walk past him like I had never seen him before, but I kept an eye cocked and a loose hand near one of my revolvers.

  More frequently I saw Weasel, who always seemed to be scuttling about, looking at me, showing me those nasty green teeth as if they was a prize of some kind. Ruggert I didn’t see much—a glance of him now and then. I guess his newfound wealth allowed him to keep tabs on me while he rested up at one of the saloons with a glass of beer.

  Once I knew Ruggert and Burned Man was one and the same, I asked about, discovered that his mine, though it had delivered big for a while, had played out like an aging whore. All that could be got from it was got, and now it was abandoned. What he had plied out of it let Ruggert go about town dressed in nice clothes with a built-up shoe (turned out the Apache had shaved off one of his heels and clipped a few toes), and he was eating at the finer places, such as they was. Places where colored wasn’t supposed to go unless it was to sweep out or do what I did, bounce drunks and empty spit. I began to think Ruggert’s punishment from the Apache wasn’t enough after all. He was living pretty high on the hog. Still, I stuck to my plan.

  All my good feelings was cut short the next day, when after signing up for the match, word come down that Custer and his command had been wiped out at the Little Bighorn. Tensions was high in Deadwood, and most likely everywhere else except back east, though th
ey may themselves have felt a little queasy about matters. I wasn’t fond of getting killed by Indians, but their side of things was clear. We was in their world, and we was shitting on it pretty big. Digging in their sacred lands, wiping out their food, and finding all manner of reasons to justify it.

  This, however, didn’t keep me close to camp, so to speak. Next day was my day off, and I joined up with Wild Bill that morning. We gave Ruggert’s men the slip, rode our horses to the spot where me and Win did our romancing. I had told Wild Bill of my plan to enter the shooting contest, which he somehow already knew about, and finally revealed to him that I knew the burned fellow and that we had a past. I told him all of it. He was a good listener. I told it to him as we rode out of town, side by side.

  When we got to the hill, we stood under the big tree and looked at the drop below. Grass and wildflowers flowed down the hill like a carpet had been rolled out. The air was crisp as a fresh-baked cracker.

  “You know, a man could get used to living in a spot like this, having him a house and a wife,” Wild Bill said.

  “You have a wife, Bill,” I said.

  “I know. That’s the one I meant.”

  “You thinking about hanging up your guns?”

  “I’d like to,” he said. “But it’s harder than you might speculate. I have become the Prince of Pistoleers, which is a title sort of like Soon to Be a Fucking Leper. There ain’t nowhere to go with it, Nat. I feel that Old Man Time is soon to drop on me like a brick on a bug, as you don’t get better at being the Prince of Pistoleers. You get older at it.”

  “Go back east, Bill. Peg your guns. There you’d be a hero and wouldn’t nobody be expecting a shoot-out.”

  “Who would I be there? Just some old blowhard with a lot of windies to tell, no way to make a living unless I went into show business. I tried that with Buffalo Bill. I felt like a damn fool. Other than that there’s the plow, and I have no hankering for it. Out here I’m still a man to be reckoned with. There have even been suggestions they make Deadwood a real town with a real town marshal, and I have been recommended by some for the job. I don’t want it. I’ve done it, and it’s just more gun work. I am good at the work but tired of it. I keep trying to figure on a way out of this cage I’ve built for myself, but haven’t come upon a solid idea. Sometimes I think the best thing would be a quick exit on hell’s shingle.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Bill.”

  “Right enough. Let’s don’t talk about it at all. I am in a morose mood for no good reason I can figure. That’s not true. I know why I’m that way.”

  “Custer?”

  “Yep. I knew him. Always was an impulsive ass. Got through the war when he should have been killed ten times over. I think he got to thinking he was invincible. That his luck couldn’t run out. I used to feel that way. Age has a way of pissing on those kinds of thoughts, though. Hell with it. Let’s get you ready.”

  What he meant was we had come to practice shooting for the match. Wild Bill himself wasn’t going to enter. He told me, “I have nothing to gain but a possible loss of reputation. If I have a bad night, that’s all that will be remembered, and my stock will plunge like beaver hats against silk in popularity. Fewer will be scared of me. More will be willing to try me.”

  That made sense to me.

  While we was pulling out our paper and clay targets from the saddlebags, laying out our ammunition on a blanket, Bill said, “I have spoken to Jack McCall.”

  “One was with that bunch at the Gem?” I realized I hadn’t seen him about town with the others.

  “The very same broken-nose, wandering-eye son of a bitch. He has given me some information, but its usage might be more important if we consider the source. He is telling me what we already know. This fellow you call Ruggert and I call Yule Log wants you dead. And now that you’ve told me the story I know why, though it makes about as much sense as spit-polishing a pickle. He has plenty of help beyond them we’ve seen. You degraded many a white man in your job as bouncer. Sometimes in front of white women.”

  “Only them that acted like fools got a whacking,” I said. “In front of women or in front of the stove.”

  “Be that the case or not, the attitude is the same. There was, by the way, talk of banning your dusky breed from competing in the shooting match, as they felt that was putting colored on equal footing with whites. I had a lively debate with the organizers of the match myself.”

  “And how did that come out?” I asked.

  “They came around to my point of view.”

  “Thanks, Bill.”

  “No need to speak of it. I know your prowess from a night not long ago. Those were some fine shots in the dark. But to not drift too far from my original point, you haven’t got many turned out in your favor. Jack McCall, that squirrelly son of a bitch, claims to be a defector. Says he’s telling me the insides of it, but I figure he is merely trying to keep my eye off things by leading me to look in the wrong directions. I think it’s his mission to keep watch on me and report to them. I can’t see him with the guts to attempt to dispatch me, but he might have plans to keep me busy or lead me into a trap with the others. Were he to pull his shitty little revolver on me, I could sing a song and take a piss before I needed to pull my weapon. Then I’d have time to shoot him twice.”

  “Don’t underestimate a sneak,” I said. “I done that with Ruggert, and he just keeps on coming. A man warned me about him, but I thought I had outrun him by time and distance. He got burned on and cut on by Apache, left out on the plains to die, but sure as the sun comes up and the moon goes down, here he is, and wealthy now. I knowed him when he didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, and now he has—”

  “Minions,” Bill said. “Still, I am a good judge of character and gunmen. And Jack McCall is no gunman. It’s the others you—or I—have to be concerned with.”

  Bill had brought a few bottles with him, and they had corks in them, and he put them out at a goodly distance, say, thirty feet, then went on to shoot the center of those corks, driving them and the lead into the bottles. I tried it using the Colt Mr. Loving had given me and did the same, though I have to say with a bit more concentration between shots.

  Bill was like Mr. Loving. He could be talking to you, scratching his ass, and shooting at the same time and not have any chance of missing. I have heard some say that the things Bill was able to do with his pistols was just big talk, but I’m here to tell you that ain’t so. I might also add that Bill did all this with cap and ball weapons, which he preferred.

  When those bottles was busted up, he had me toss some hard clay targets from the edge of the hill, sailing them way out and high over that falling carpet of flowers. He hit ten out of ten, then had me flip a dime in the air. It didn’t go too high before the wind caught it, floated it out beyond the hill, but Bill shot it, sent it spinning into the distance.

  “Damn, Bill,” I said. “I thought your eyes was bad.”

  “Mostly they give me trouble at night. I can’t figure on that, but it’s a kind of moon-blindness that I have. The product of those whores I told you about. I can see shapes, but I can’t get the distinctness of a thing. It’s like there’s sleep in my eyes or someone has rubbed oil over them.”

  “You shoot better on instinct than most men shoot by plan and practice.”

  “In my line of work, which is mostly gambling, being a good shot is only part of it. Weapons that are finely tuned and oiled and have proper ammunition are what make the difference in living another day. I also load my own ball and powder and therefore have control of its quality.”

  He spoke with a certain enthusiasm, but there was behind it a weariness, like he was struggling up one last hill and hoping to get to the top so he could lie down.

  “Try the dime, Nat. It will catch on the wind, but if you shoot at the shine, you’ll hit it.”

  Bill flipped the dime for me. I used the LeMat, flipping the swivel in such a way I fired off the shotgun round, blasting tha
t dime most likely around the world.

  That made Bill laugh like a braying donkey. “That was some trick, Nat. Let me see that thing.”

  I handed it to him to look over, and when he was done, he said, “I ain’t never seen nothing like that, ain’t even heard of such.”

  I told him about the gun, all that Mr. Loving had told me.

  “That’s interesting,” Bill said, “but now let’s see how you do without a trick.”

  I reverted to my Colt. I tried to remember all the tips Mr. Loving had given me, the main one being point that pistol like a finger. First time I pointed at that dime I might as well have left the pistol in my leather-lined pocket I missed so bad. I told Bill I had been trying to hit a cloud, which made him laugh. Second time I made the shot without too much thought and sent the dime spinning off my bullet. I think it was one of the more unique shots I had ever made.

  That was it for wasting dimes. Bill said, “You don’t need that kind of shooting to kill a man, but you do to win a contest. Fact is I can kill better than I can contest. That’s as natural to me as the moving of my bowels. Targets, over a period of time—well, I start to get distracted by everyone else, start seeing the gals in the stands, get it in my mind I have to style for them, and so on. Shooting off the cuff, when needed, or out here shooting targets with a friend, not for a contest, I’m in my place. You, my companion, have the ability to do both and well. You are focused. That is a skill that is hard to teach. You have to come with it in your bones. In a real gunfight the only way to survive is to not think about winning, getting shot, or losing. You have to be in the instant. Your only thought is your target. Pull it and point and gently squeeze the trigger.”

  “Take your time slowly,” I said.

  “Exactly. And you are cool under fire, Nat. I have seen you in action. That will win you more fights than a quick draw. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know and do.”