by Bill Crider
I got up and asked Hamp about Tabor.
“Who the hell cares. Who did this?”
“Morgan,” I said. “He’s over there.”
Hamp took a couple of steps and started kicking Morgan carefully and methodically. Then he came back to me and took the hammer that I still held. I didn’t think Morgan would be getting up from where he lay.
The building continued to burn. The heat was intense, and everyone was backing away. There were no other buildings nearby, but people would soon be gathering from the fort and the trading post and the few stores. There wouldn’t be anything they could do.
The girl was in there. Why hadn’t she come out? The heat seared my face. Smoke rolled out the door. I didn’t want to go in.
I had to. For once in my life I had to take action. I forced myself to go through the door. The smoke choked me, and the blazing heat singed my hair.
Tabor’s room was on the right. I kicked the door open and went into the room. The girl was there, trying to help Tabor into the wheelchair, but she was having a bad time of it. They were both half blinded by smoke, coughing and hacking. Tabor couldn’t stand or get his balance.
“Let me help,” I said, but I knew even as I said it that I wasn’t going to help Tabor. He could stay there and burn.
I pushed him aside, and he fell to the floor. I took the girl’s hand and pulled her toward the door.
She jerked away, spitting at me like a cat. “We can’t leave him!”
“What?”
“I love him! We can’t leave him!”
She bent down and put her hands under Tabor’s shoulders, trying to lift him. He got his hands on the seat of the chair and started to pull himself up into it.
Fire ran all across the ceiling above us. It was going to fall any second. I went to the girl and pulled her away.
“Leave him,” I said.
She spit at me again and slapped me. I hit her on the point the chin, and she collapsed. I caught her before she dropped to the floor and stumbled out of the room with her in my arms. I carried her outside through the smoke and got as far from the building as I could. She was struggling by then so I put her down. She kicked me in the shin.
“You bastard! I love him!” She rushed toward the burning saloon.
I’d thought she was a slave. She’d been nothing of the sort. She’d stayed with Tabor willingly. I’d had a stupid notion that she’d thank me for saving her, maybe move in with me, do the things she’d done with Tabor.
I laughed aloud. I’d thought Morgan was a fool, but I’d been the one. I let her go.
She didn’t get far. Before she got ten steps, Tabor came flying out the door through the smoke. His chair stayed in the air for a second or two, then dropped, falling over on its side. Tabor rolled out and started pulling himself away from the building like an injured bug.
Hamp ran to him and picked him up. He carried him away, the girl clinging to his arm.
I sat down on the hard ground and watched the building burn.
There was nothing left of the Bad Dog the next day. Hamp, Tabor, and the girl stayed in Morgan’s wagon. Morgan had disappeared at some point after Tabor came out of the building. I had a feeling that where Morgan had gone, no one would ever find him.
The whores all found places to stay. I didn’t ask where. I stayed at the fort in the soldiers’ barracks, but I couldn’t do that for long. It was time for me to move on, to find another place where I could let the music that was inside me find its way out. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had, and it would have to do.
Hamp came up to me when I left the barracks. “Tabor wants you.”
“I don’t work for him anymore. There’s nowhere left to work.”
Hamp gripped my upper arm and squeezed. Hard. Pain shot down to my fingers. I felt my knees go weak. Hamp didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I went along with him.
Tabor sat on the back of the wagon, his useless legs dangling. The girl sat beside him, holding his hand, her blonde head resting on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed.
“You left me to die in there,” Tabor said.
He was burned on one side of his face. It was covered with some kind of salve. Some of his hair was missing. He looked like hell.
I would’ve run, but Hamp had my arm.
“I had to save the girl,” I said.
She opened her eyes and looked at me. They were pure blue, sky blue, and as full of hatred as any eyes I’d ever seen.
“You fucking liar,” she said.
Tabor smiled, though it must have hurt him. He said, “All right, Hamp.”
Hamp slid his hand down to my wrist and dragged me to a barrel sitting by the back of the wagon. An ax handle leaned against the barrel.
“You want to help me?” he said, and the girl jumped down, smiling now.
Hamp forced my right hand down on the barrelhead. The girl picked up the ax handle.
“No,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” the girl said, raising the handle over her head.
“Please,” I said.
She stopped, still smiling. “Say it again.”
“Please.”
“Fuck you,” she said, and she brought the handle down.
All that happened a while back. I don’t know how many times Morgan’s daughter hit my right hand before she started on the left. I’d passed out long before then.
My hands are more like claws now. Looking at them, you’d never think they could have made music once.
The music’s still in me. “Rescue the Perishing,” “Onward Christian Soldiers,” “Listen to the Mockingbird,” “Oh Don’t You Remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?,” “My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night.”
The music’s in me, but I can’t let it out. Sometimes I think I’m going to pop like a boil the way it swells me.
But I can’t play piano now. I can barely hold a drink without someone’s help. I think I can hold a pistol, though. I won’t need to hold it long, if only I can pull the trigger.