Skinwalkers

by Hill, Bear

  “Yes.“

  A long pause.

  “Garrett his daddy?“

  “His papa’s long dead.“

  Another long pause.

  “Is this the part where you ask me what a nice señorita like me—?“

  “That’s your business.“

  “Yes, it fucking is my business.“

  Silence.

  “So what are you two doing here?“

  “A thousand reasons. None of them worth speaking.“

  “You could leave.“

  “And go where—? You going to save me, stranger? Take us away from here? Answer our prayers?“

  More silence.

  “I didn’t think so.“

  Maxine retracted her hand and turned over in bed to face the wall. They lay that way for several moments, each facing away from the other. Then, slowly, the bounty hunter rolled onto his side. Maxine felt his hand on her shoulder and tears began to leak from her eyes. But then a scream echoed from downstairs, and the sweet dream they’d almost shared was replaced by a nightmare.

  Jimbo sat at the card table laughing, amused by Wilson’s latest joke at Hank’s expense.

  “Fuck you, Wilson,“ Hank pouted. “I did bull’s-eye that ace using a mirror. Didn’t I, Robby?“

  “You sure did, Hank. Sure did.“

  “Bullshit, Hank,“ Wilson said. “And you, Robby. What do you know? If you’d ever get out of the bottle, you might realize you’re stuck so far up Hank’s ass we can see you smiling every time his chin wags.“

  “I must add, Brother Hank,“ Reverend Phillips said, “that on the day in question I saw no such—“

  “Oh, shut your cocksucker, Preacher,“ Hank said.

  “Stop it. All of you,“ Jimbo said, gasping between guffaws. “You’re killing me!“

  “You never mind them.“ Gertrude slipped her fleshy arms around Hank’s neck. “Why don’t you come up stairs and let ol’ Gerdie make you feel all right?“

  “Now that puts a frightful vision in my head,“ Wilson said.

  “Like a buffalo scrogging a coyot’,“ Jimbo said.

  “That ain’t scary,“ Robby said. “There’s this one time, when I was back in Montana, I was up in this whorehouse, smooching on this ol’ girl. I reached down to cop a feel of her cunny, and by God! I felt a pecker down there, big and hard as my fucking arm.“

  “No shit?“ Wilson said. “What’d you do?“

  Robby shrugged, “Well, I’d already paid my two bits—.“

  The room erupted into guffaws.

  “Great God, almighty!“ Wilson said. “What about you, Preacher? You ever been face to face with the evil one while you was casting out devils? What are you afraid of?“

  “No devils,“ Phillips said. “But an empty offering plate gets my hackles up, let me tell you.“

  Wilson looked back over his shoulder.

  “What about you, Little Joe?“ Wilson asked. “What scares the likes of a crazy, Godless savage like yourself?“

  “Ah, hell,“ Hank said. “Little Joe ain’t scared of nothing. Ain’t that right, Little Joe? Come on!“

  “Yeah,“ Robby said. “Little Joe ain’t scared of nothing!“

  “He’s a fearless son of a bitch,“ Garrett said. “Wouldn’t keep him around otherwise.“

  “Little Joe—?“ Wilson said.

  Little Joe stood in silence, something obviously eating at him from the inside out.

  “There’s only one thing my people fear,“ Little Joe said, his face a tombstone. “When I was a boy with my tribe, the Navajo would raid our village regularly. That was not so bad. Sometimes we did the same. But sometimes … sometimes Coyote would change so that he walked on two legs, and ride with them.“

  “Coyote?“ Hank asked. “What the fuck’s he talking about?“

  “Coyote, Mr. Hank,“ the reverend said. “The trickster. The evil one. Indian’s version of Satan; God knows I’ve tried to remedy them of such ideas.“

  “He was already old then,“ Little Joe continued, “his eyes already clouding so he only gazed upon the spirit world. But when he rode, it was bad medicine for all. No arrow or bullet could kill him. And those who tried met death themselves, or worse.

  “It was after one of his raids that the plague swept through my village. It killed my mother. My uncles. My little brother rotted to nothing before he finally joined the spirit world.

  “I prayed and prayed. But the Great Spirit did nothing. It was then I knew the Sun Dance is wrong. We are all alone. And death is very real.

  “That’s why I ran. I left before Coyote could get me. Because, I know, when we die, he’s all there is. Forever and ever.“

  Uncomfortable silence hung over the room. A coyote howled far off in the distance and everyone in the room jumped, their heads turning to the door, the lizard part of their brains knowing Coyote had come for them, and there was no escape.

  “Uh, yeah,“ Wilson said, “Anyway. Jimbo, what about you?“

  “Well, I don’t really like to talk about it,“ Jimbo said, his head bowed. “But when I was in Company H with all the other good Southern men—God bless their souls—we had this kid with us used to fucking whistle all the damn time.

  “Day and night, didn’t matter if we was on the march or in the rack, he’d be whistling something. Usually a gospel hymn, or more likely ’Dixie.’ Dixie was his favorite.

  “Well, we got down over to Murfreesboro one night and ran smack into a Union ambush. I mean it was bad. Boys dying left and right of me. I took some shrapnel in my side and that sent me straight to the wounded tent.

  “Well, I hadn’t lain there ten minutes when I heard that boy whistling. But something was wrong. It was like he couldn’t get his wind or something. I rolled over and looked at the cot—hell, it wasn’t a cot—fucking bloody sheets scattered on the ground. Anyway, I rolled left and saw a headless body bleeding all over the sheet beside me. I couldn’t figure out why they’d have a man so obviously dead in there. But then I rolled over on my other side. And I swear, as God as my fucking witness, there was that boy’s head—only his head—cut off at the neck, sitting on the sheet beside me. And I’ll be damned if it wasn’t just fucking whistling just as loud and hard as it could! But it didn’t have any lungs, and blood was pouring out its mouth, so the sound came out all raspy gurgles.“

  Silence had once again enveloped the room. All sat staring wide-eyed at Jimbo.

  “And you know what?“ Jimbo said.

  “No,“ Robby said. “What, Jimbo?“

  “He wasn’t just whistling Dixie.“

  Laughter rang throughout the saloon. Everyone was slapping shoulders and congratulating Jimbo on his joke when the sound of hoofbeats thundered into the room.

  Two Hispanic soldiers garbed in federal blues crashed through the batwing doors, carrying a wounded third between them. The injured soldier was young, barely old enough to shave. He screamed for his mother as his handlers struggled to keep his guts from spilling out of his bloody, shredded stomach.

  The card players were on their feet instantly.

  “Get him out of here,“ Garrett boomed. He left his perch in the corner and marched toward the soldiers. “He’s bleeding all over my floor!“

  The soldiers paid him no mind. They carried the wounded boy over to a table and laid him on top of it. He screamed in pain at the rough jostling of his body.

  An officer with long, blond locks and a full beard ran into the saloon, pistol in hand. Ten more armed soldiers trailed in behind him.

  “We need a doctor!“ the officer yelled. “Right goddamn now!“

  “I said get him out of my saloon!“ Garrett screamed.

  The officer brought his pistol to bear on Garrett. Little Joe took aim at the officer with his scattergun. The soldiers trained their muskets on Little Joe and the card players. They, in turn, brought their pistols to bear on the soldiers. Hands shook. Hearts pounded. Seconds drew into eons.

  “This is my fucking saloon,“ Garret
t said, his voice low and even. “And I said get. The fuck. Out.“

  “I am Captain Richard P. Arrington,“ the officer said, insanity in his eyes. “We are Kit Carson’s Own, sir. Company A of the First New Mexico Volunteer Calvary. And we claim this godforsaken shithole as property of the United States Government.

  “You are outnumbered. Lower your weapons or I’ll have my men cut you and everyone else in this saloon down like so much chafe.“

  Garrett looked the captain up and down. Blood was caked in his beard and the long, blond hair spilling down from his Stetson. The left side of the soldier’s face twitched involuntarily and the gun shook in his hand. Garrett had seen men get the shakes like that during the war. Such behavior usually occurred right after they’d come out of a particularly bad scrape. Hell, he’d had them himself when he lost his arm. You didn’t want to be around somebody when they acted like that. They might blow your head off just for looking at them wrong. Garrett knew from personal experience.

  “Joe—“ Garrett sighed. “Get the doc.“

  Doctor Sean Howard wet his sharpening stone, the sound of his humming reverberating off the slaughterhouse’s walls. Satisfied of the stone’s readiness, he repeatedly ran the edges of his butcher knife across its surface. A three-hundred-pound hog watched this from a pen in the room’s corner. The pen extended from a closed chute that led outside.

  Sides of beef and pork hung from hooks and pulleys along the slaughterhouse’s high ceiling at various intervals. Some were rotting. Maggots crawled in most. Flies buzzed around all.

  Everything from floor to ceiling was caked in old blood dried the color of pitch. The stench of it combined with the three-day-old pig shit lining the pen was overwhelming, but it seldom bothered the doc these days. He’d long grown used to the less pleasant aspects of his alternate vocation. In truth, he often preferred it compared to the burdens laid upon him as a practitioner of medicine.

  The doc abruptly whirled from the sharpening stone and hurled his knife toward the floor. It struck home in a large gray rat that’d been gnawing on a dropped piece of lard.

  “Got you, you little bastard,“ the doc said, his Irish brogue thick and nasal. He walked over and took the knife’s handle, lifting the skewered rat to his face. “Used to bull’s-eye a lot smaller than you back when I ran with Peg Leg Saul and his medicine show.“

  The doc scowled and shook the knife. The rat sailed across the room to land among several other rodent carcasses piled in the room’s corner.

  The doc turned and began to sharpen the knife once again. He didn’t bother to wipe it off beforehand.

  Satisfied with the knife’s edge was keen, he sat the utensil down and walked across the room to grab a large, spike-tipped hammer. He walked up to the hog, humming all the while. He raised the hammer and, as if it were as natural as breathing, brought its spiked end crashing down on the pig’s forehead. Blood splattered across the doc’s face and body as the spike sank its entire length through the hog’s skull, deep into its brain.

  The hog flailed wildly in the pen, seeming more alive in its moment of death than in the preceding several hours. It squealed briefly and rocked its head from side to side. The motion yanked the hammer from the doc’s hand so that the tool rode on top of the hog’s head like the world’s ugliest unicorn horn. Then the hog dropped to the ground, the last remnants of life twitching in its hind leg. The doc’s hum continued without interruption.

  He yanked the hammer out of the hog’s head, the gesture causing still more blood to escape onto the floor. The doc propped the hammer up beside the pen and took hold of one of the chains dangling from the compound pulleys bolted to the ceiling joists above. He secured the hook at the chain’s end in the tendons sprouting from pig’s ankle. Then he drew in the pulley’s opposing chain. The chain hooked into the pig’s ankle rattled, tightened, and then slowly lifted the hog into the air.

  The doc now sweaty and weary, walked to the table and retrieved his butcher knife. He sauntered up to the pig, bent down, and cut its throat, letting the blood gush to the floor and down a metal drain. The doc rose and wiped the knife on his apron. He moved across the room and laid the blade beside the sharpening stone.

  When the doc turned again, he saw not the hog hanging before him, but a dead baby covered in blood, the majority of its umbilical still attached and dangling in the air beneath it.

  The doc shrieked as he fell back against the cutting table, his face a mask of horror. He slammed his eyes shut. He shuddered and rubbed his face, smearing pig blood as he tried to wipe the vision from his eyes.

  When he opened his eyes again, he gasped in utter relief to see only the hog suspended in the air before him.

  “Goddamn whores and their goddamn messes,“ the doc yelled. He gazed at his right hand. It shook uncontrollably. The doc cradled it against his chest as he stood up and walked across the room. He threw open the doors of the cabinets lining the far wall and rummaged inside, seeking the relief he grew to need more and more with each passing day.

  The doc withdrew a flask of dark liquid—something else he’d been introduced to by Peg Leg Saul. He didn’t waste time getting a spoon or measuring cup. He simply yanked out the flask’s cork and took a large swallow of its contents. The results were immediate.

  The doc backed into the adjoining wall and then slid down its length to sit on the floor.

  “Goddamn whores,“ the doc said, his words coming slow and groggy. “Shouldn’t have to deal with their mess.“

  There came a knock at the slaughterhouse’s large wooden doors. The doc said nothing. The knocking grew louder, more insistent.

  “Go the fuck away,“ the doc yelled. “I’m busy!“

  “Doc. It is Little Joe. There is a boy with his guts hanging out over at the saloon.“

  “What the fuck do I care?“

  “He needs help, Doc. Bad.“

  “Jesus Christ,“ the doc mumbled. “Can’t they just fucking die and leave me in peace?“

  The doc lifted himself from the floor. “Hold on.“

  Pablo Lopez, Maxine’s son, stood beneath the blood-splattered sky, the last remaining rays of its sun sinking behind the mountains west of Perdition. The boy almost lost his balance on the fence rail he was negotiating when Little Joe and the doc came hurrying around the side of the slaughterhouse. Pablo saw that the doc, still clad in his bloodied butcher’s apron, carried his black medicine bag. Pablo held no real interest in either the doc or his bag, but sometimes the doc let Pablo lay out the bag’s instruments and count them over and over again. Pablo didn’t exactly enjoy this act, but it did give him a sense of peace. In truth, counting or organizing anything brought Pablo comfort. And comfort was something seldom found in Perdition, so his mother encouraged the activity.

  Pablo hopped down from the rail and joined Little Joe and the doc as they trekked by on their way to the saloon. Pablo tried to pull the bag from the doc’s hands only to have the butcher repeatedly smack his hands away.

  “Not now, Pablo,“ Doc said.

  Pablo wouldn’t take no for an answer. He continued pawing at the bag as they reached the saloon and walked past the sleeping dog, entering through the bat-wing doors. It was then Pablo heard the wounded soldier screaming. Pablo clamped his hands over his ears and grimaced as if in pain. He stepped around the soldier standing guard at the saloon entrance and shrank down into the corner made where wall met bar. Pablo’s eyes turned up in his sockets and he began to rock back and forth where he crouched.

  “Jesus Christ.“ The doc sat his bag in a chair beside the table and began rummaging through it. “What the hell happened to this poor bastard?“

  The wounded soldier began to buck and writhe atop the table, slinging blood and bile over the two soldiers struggling to hold him down.

  “Lay still, Sanchez,“ one of the soldiers, a corporal, said.

  Sanchez vomited blood on the corporal for his trouble.

  “We need some help over here!“ the corporal said. “
Johnson! Mendez!“

  Two more soldiers left their post at the saloon’s windows to help hold the wounded private.

  The doc produced a large syringe from his bag and thumped it with the tip of his fingers. He inserted it directly into the private’s carotid artery and injected its contents. Sanchez went limp.

  The doc took in the red entrails spilling from the boy’s stomach. “For fuck’s sake. What a mess. Joe, bring over some alcohol. Pure grain if you got it. I’ll need some towels, too.“

  “Lacey,“ Garrett commanded. “My office.“

  Lacey obediently scurried up the staircase.

  “He going to make it, Doc?“ the corporal asked.

  The doc continued to stare at the boy’s guts. He thought he saw movement among them—thought he heard the slightest whimper—a baby’s whimper.

  “Doc?“

  The doc shook himself. “What’s your name, Corporal?“

  “Martinez, sir. Julio.“

  “Martinez,“ the doc said. “I’ll be honest with you, son. It might be better if he don’t.“

  From the translated letters of Corporal Julio Martinez, Co. A, 1st NMVC…

  Keystone, New Mexico

  March the 8th, 1864

  To Miss Maria Sophia

  Dear Miss Sophia,

  I will inform you with pleasure that I am well at the present time and I hope that when this reaches you that it may find you well also. The boys are generally well at the present and in very good spirits, and our mounts are in good health. I was glad to hear of that the birth of Jose and Petra’s child. You know I make no secret that I wish for us to one day wed and have children of our own in good time. And in that regard, I fear I have news that you will not find favorable. I know that in my last letter I said I would be coming home soon. However, I regret to inform you my company’s captain has accepted a special assignment and made a liar of me in doing so.

  I suppose from my past letters and other sources you have heard that my regiment has made quick work of the Navajo since Manuelito fell at Canyon de Chelly, and that we are now gathering the Indians for a move to Fort Sumner. While this is true in greatest part, word has reached Colonel Carson of one or two villages still in existence in the country neighboring San Ramirez. Captain Arrington has volunteered our company to route these remaining stranglers and to bring total success to our mission.