by Barry Reese
Sam Hane stood on the gallows of Judge Isaac Parker.
“Damndest thing,” leaked a nasally squeal from the impenetrable darkness around Hane. He looked up, then around. Main Street was not off to his right nor was that single flickering gas lamp. No one, not Parker or his two cronies, not people returning home from the theater or staggering to the cat houses outside of town, no one was around him. Except for the owner of the disturbing voice, grinding like the rusted hinges of a coffin
“Howdy, lawboy,” the shrill tone rattled accusingly, “I been hopin’ to see you here. Reckoned one as lily white as you would get crawfished by the Lucifer’s own Judge soon enough.”
Hane stood up, half supported by anger, the rest by fear. Instinctively, his hands brushed his hips, hoping to slide against pistol butts. They touched nothing. “I’m dead,” Hane stammered, his mind still fevered with the images and sensations of bullets and treachery. “My body oughtta be lying down below. Not up here.”
The disembodied voice cackled like cascading chain links. “Down below,” it chortled, “that’s what ol’ Isaac is all about. He’s cast you off, Hane. Tossed you over to make sure that he keeps his iron hand on the Territory. Your body ain’t nowhere, all gone, eat up by little tongues of fire and stone.”
“Hell.” Hane said, giving name to where he was, not swearing. That would do him no good if this phantom spoke true. “Hell is a gallows?”
“Be fittin’, wouldn’t it?” The voice moved closer, a squat, but bulbous form waddling from the cavernous pitch in front of Hane. “Played hell with me, for sure and certain.” The form was a man, barely over five feet tall. The tattered tan shirt and raggedy brown pants barely contained his corpulent form. “But no, this ain’t the last stop on the ride.” Thinning black hair sat atop a roll of bulging skin that passed for his forehead, a stained straw pork pie hat hiding nothing, barely hanging on for the ride.
“This is the road in the wrong direction, I’d reckon.” Fat rippled from top to bottom as the ruddy faced man rocked back and forth, his legs like squat beer kegs. His skin was pasty white, pockmarked with knife scars and acne. Except for where his neck should have been. There the skin was torn, as if it were fabric ripped apart. The muscles and tendons of his neck pulsated, dangling from the wound. “And me, I’m one of the stumbling blocks in your path, lawboy.”
“John Thornton,” Hane whispered, his blue eyes unable to turn from the horrific spectacle of Thornton’s neck. Veins thumped and clustered around the exposed muscles, hints of wet white bone showing through. Hane had been there when that happened last year, the day in 1892 when Thornton was hung. The filthy little murderer who’d killed his own daughter after she’d had good sense to escape years of molestation at his hands, went to the gallows in August. The hangman wrestled for what seemed like hours in the incessant Arkansas sun to get the noose over Thornton’s fat head. Even then, the ill-fitting rope couldn’t handle its load once the trap let loose. Thornton dropped like a stone and the rope held, but the corpulent killer’s weight could not resist gravity. The body wrenched and spasmed with such force that the folds of skin comprising Thornton’s neck split wide open, blood and bile spewing forth, his internal workings for all to see. Just as Sam Hane saw them now.
“You’re standing,” Hane queried, his hands clenched in claws at his side out of habit, ‘between me and the Devil and you think I have a problem with that, John?”
Thornton’s puffy lips curled up. “Me and others, Hane. But you can’t sit on your haunches and wait forever out, boy. You’d make a run at me soon enough. But,” Thornton thrust forward, speed he’d never had in life pushing him headlong at Hane, “I ain‘t ever been one known for patience!”
Hane sallied to the left as Thornton charged him. Reaching madly for a rail that wasn’t there, Hane balanced dangerously on the edge of the gallows platform, Thornton in front of him and endless emptiness behind him. Choosing the grotesque over the unknown, Hane got his feet about him and jumped at Thornton. Ducking low to avoid the deathblow from the sadist’s ham-like hands, Hane dropped punch after punch into Thornton’s flabby figure. The two men grappled one another, Hane hitting his opponent over and over again and Thornton giggling like a tickled schoolboy at every strike.
“A noose couldn’t take me apart, lawboy,” Thornton shrilled. “You’re a nugget or shy off if you think you can.”
Yelling in frustration, Hane relaxed his right fist and grasped wildly. His fingers dug into Thornton’s gaping neck wound, wrapping like steel pliers around soft tissue and wiry tendons. Thornton stopped dancing around and yelped like a scalded dog at the first touch of Hane’s hand. Hane sensed an unnerving tension take hold of Thornton and took advantage of it, yanking a handful of sinew and muscle out as if pulling a breached calf from its fighting mother. Thornton screamed and spun away from Hane across the gallows floor like a demented toy top. His fat inflated hands slapped at the hole in his neck as gibberish tumbled out of his mouth. He teetered on his barrel like legs, unable to steady himself. Hane watched blankly as John Thornton wavered at the edge of the platform across from him, one hand out, begging for Hane to take it, to pull him back. Hane wore an impassive stare until Thornton’s own bulk did him in once more, carrying him head over heel into whatever was beyond the gallows.
Hane held his position, his eyes wary, waiting for Thornton’s obese paw to rise back up, to try to climb back at him. After that didn’t happen, Hane turned his back on where he’d awoken and moved forward. Thornton had been right. Waiting in the limbo between living and dying would rob Hane of all his faculties. Ahead was the only way he could go, farther along the platform. Toward the others Thornton mentioned, the others that would get in his way.
Sam lost count of how many steps he’d taken, maybe four or four thousand, before he heard the turkey gobble. Back home out behind his little two room farmhouse east of Fort Smith, he’d have ignored it, counted it as another one of a thousand normal noises. But now in some vast purgatorial vacuum, any hint of someone or something else filled him with fight and hints of panic.
The gobble filled his ears and the silence around him again, a slow, steady warbling. “Not likely you’re a tom,” Hane offered aloud. “More so you’re another ill-spent life that dangled below my feet some time ago.”
Another gobble, this one punctuated with a shotgun blast, sent Hane tumbling forward to avoid being hit. As he ended up knelt on one knee, stories other marshals had told him around campfires while out in the territory came to mind. One in particular, of one of the earliest criminals hung by Parker’s whims and fancies. Of a man who killed his own friend, ambushed him in the woods. Of the way he killed him, his body nearly cut in half by a shotgun. And of how he got him into the woods in the first place. By gobbling like a turkey.
“Orpheus McGee.” Sam Hane leaned forward, one hand on the ground, as he said the name, expecting someone to shuffle into view as if summoned. The infernal stillness about him exploded into a shower of lead pellets as a shotgun fired again, this time at Hane’s back, three barking shots in a row. Hane flattened himself against the wood beneath him, rolling to the left as the last two shots passed overhead. Again, Sam Hane floundered on the narrow walkway the gallows floor provided, his body prone at the left side of the precipice. Out of the nothingness across the platform, he watched something coalesce. Shiny silver, two nostril-like pits, cloud gray smoke curling from both of them. The double barreled shotgun looked like none Hane had ever seen, slender, sleeker, and almost giving off its own light.
The wielder of the gun appeared less unique as he loped slowly toward Hane. He was thin, emaciated, a long dead sapling in an ill wind. Scraggly dirt-brown hair matted on his forehead and hung to his shoulders. Sprigs of hair dotted his narrow rodent’s face like dobs of mud. Mismatched clothes hung on his frame like sheets, borrowed from some other dead outlaw so McGee could be hung in them. His eyes gleamed like bloodstained pebbles, darting all around as if he expected an army to swoop down on h
im.
“Figures,” Sam Hane taunted, careful to keep the gun in view. “Man who hides to kill once hides to kill again.”
McGee opened his mouth, his lips working to make words, but all that came out was a gobble. Rivulets of skin hanging beneath his chin quivered as the unnerving strange sound roiled out of his throat.
Hane pulled his legs forward, but made no attempt to stand. He again teased, “It’s no doubt why you hung, Orpheus. You’re a dram off to go around making bird noises even after you’ve shown yourself. Talk, man.”
McGee stopped. His entire body shook, the gun’s deadly glare still steady on Hane. Suddenly, McGee looked up and bellowed, or at least tried to. Instead it was the unearthly trill of a bird never meant to sing. It rose in anger, then collapsed back in on itself in almost laughable sorrow. McGee raised the gleaming shotgun above his head, firing twice, throwing his arms wide. A rain of pellets pelted the platform around both men, death in drops of lead.
As the last shot’s shout echoed, Sam Hane swung his legs out toward McGee, lashing out like a whip. The withered skeleton of a man whimpered like an injured bird, his feet flying out from under him. The gun flew one way out of his hands as Orpheus McGee fell the other onto his back. Hane followed his legs around, turning and sitting up quickly, launching himself for the weapon. As it hit the floor, Hane clambered after it. McGee made a play as well, crawling for the gun, bony fingers clawing for it. The gun skittered across the wood, yet another thing going as if pulled toward the darkness. Hane scooped it up, spun, and aimed it down at the floor behind him. Right in the center of Orpheus McGee’s chest.
“You’re beat,” Hane rasped between clenched teeth. “Give me the shells and pass on away, Orpheus.”
Abject terror fled from McGee’s face at Hane’s words. Instead his rat-like mouth smiled, bits and pieces of that insipid turkey gobble of his slipping out. Chuckling. McGee was laughing at Hane with two barrels of a shotgun weighing on his chest.
From somewhere far inside, Sam Hane tasted rage like he’d only tasted once before. It spread in him like a disease, a contagion running rampant in every vein, every cell, every beat of his heart. Roaring, he pulled the gun’s trigger, no longer caring that it would click on an empty chamber. Chaos erupted from the gun, shot riddling Orpheus McGee’s chest. The skinny scrap of man tremored, gurgling and gobbling. Surprised, Hane now sensed it. The weight of the gun. Loaded. Both barrels. Always, forever loaded.
“No need to talk, Orpheus,” Hane spat, his finger tightening again. “You’ve said enough.” He fired again. The shot peppered Orpheus McGee’s body, convulsing into death. As the second corpse trembled, it broke up into pieces, falling away into dust, white powder with slivers of bone and man mixed in. As it swirled away in spirals, dispersed as if by a wind that Hane could not feel, he recognized the grainy remnants of McGee’s body. And a shudder bolted through him.
“Much obliged, friend. ‘Least I won’t have to hear that damn bird squawking ‘round here for a while.”
Sam Hane did not hesitate. He whirled around, the shotgun following with him, already vomiting hell and ruin as it moved. Pellets strafed the gallows floor where the owner of the gravelly compliment should have stood. Nothing there but darkness and wood.
“Good sense,” the throaty whisper added. “Make nice and all, try to keep you at ease. But you played it right. Gonna break you into tiny pieces and sew your soul to my hat.”
A boulder like fist slammed into the back of Sam Hane’s head, sending him sprawling to the ground. As consciousness burst into millions of blazing stars in his brain, Hane clung to the shotgun, pulling it tight against him as if he wanted to consume it.
“On your back, friend. And slow.”
Hane followed orders and flipped over, the gun still pressed against his body. The man standing over him with a smoldering smoke wagon in his unfisted hand was an Indian. Not a large man, but not a trifle either, standing just shy of six feet tall. A black vest and blue shirt covered his broad chest, denim pants decorated with splotches of blood on his legs. His face was dark, mostly because of the shadow cast by the brim of the hat he wore. A hat Sam Hane remembered. One he had seen on display in Judge Parker’s office. A typical man’s hat, black with a wide brim made irregular by years of wear and tear. The crown captured Hane’s interest, though. Or rather, four mis-matched buttons sewed into the crown. Four buttons marking four murders.
“Tualisto.”
The Creek brave nodded. “You’re a sharp blade, friend. Most that come by here too concerned with soiling them-selves to speak. You know quite a lot about the Judge’s business, though.”
“Not from being taught,” Hane replied. “Just from looking and listening.”
Tualisto nodded. “All a man needs.” He took a breath, even though Hane reckoned breathing was something none of these cursed things actually did, and sighed heavily. “Be mite interesting to keep you on, friend, to have someone to talk to. But,” Tualisto countered himself, his face contorting into the mask of a maniac, “I’d get around to hatin’ you enough to skin you later. Always happens that way.” He brought the six shooter around to face Hane.
The stock of the shotgun struck Tualisto’s hand hard, slapping his pistol from his grip. Wrestling with the gun and standing simultaneously, Hane had time only to grab the silver barrel with both hands as Tualisto attacked. The Indian swung hard, his fists like cannonballs, hammering Hane in a full on bombardment. The marshal feinted to the right, twisting around, hoping to shield himself, but Tualisto kept coming. An approaching storm of hatred and bloodlust, fists like murderous lightning.
Sam Hane swung the shotgun savagely, now more of a shiny club than a firearm. Tualisto’s ferocious barrage gave him time for little else. The gun slapped the Indian in the left side, then upside his head, the hat atop it never wave-ring once. Tualisto grunted and fell back into a crouch, his hands up. He sprang at Hane again with all the grace of a stalking cat, a mountain lion determined to remain the hunter, not become the hunted.
Sam Hane swung the gun again, batting Tualisto back as if he were a boy’s ball. The Creek groaned as he struck the hard wood of the gallows floor. Before he could even lift his shoulder from the platform, Hane now cast a shadow over Tualisto, the shotgun held high over his head.
“Yeah,” Tualisto said, pleased, “Could spend a while talkin’ and playin’ with one like you, friend.”
“Yeah, “Hane repeated, nodding, “but like you said, you’d get around to hating me before long.”
The stock of the gun slammed mercilessly against Tualisto’s head. In one motion, Sam Hane swung the gun, raised it back up, flipped it around, and cradled it properly, its barrels pointed squarely at Tualisto. Or where the talkative Creek had been. Nothing lay beneath Sam Hane now, nothing except four buttons, thread haunting their holes, as if they’d been ripped from a hat.
“All right!” Sam Hane shouted, his tolerance exhausted, his patience expired. “I’ve played your fool’s game! I’ve cleared the path of bad men who didn’t deserve the life they first had, much less this one! Now,” he raised the shotgun, ready for whatever might materialize in front of him, “show yourself! Cards on the table!”
“Sorry about that. Straight forward isn’t always my strong suit.”
Sam Hane had no words or thoughts to express what he heard. It was a voice, but one that came from within his own head and from the gallows floor and from every iota of darkness around him. Nothing he thought or said would capture the ferocity, the beauty, the singularity of the tone or the awesome power behind it. Sam Hane was truly stricken with awe and fear like he’d never experienced before.
Hane turned, but then realized he hadn’t. The already off-kilter reality around him eddied and churned, the sheet of black shrouding everything slowly giving away to a shade of gray. In front of Hane was a man. A man seated on a high back wooden chair. He wore black and white and his face was hidden from view. Nothing covered it, no veil or brim shadowed it, yet Sam
Hane could not see it. Any more than he could describe what the man looked like beyond hues of ebony and ivory.
“This is it?” Hane asked, truly curious. “I fight three executed men and then pass on into damnation I don’t deserve?”
“Oh,” the man in the chair said, “you definitely do not deserve what is coming, Samuel Hane. Parker is a fool whose machinations I simply decided to use for my own ends. And damnation might be just the word for it if it were anyone else. But, no,” he shifted in his seat, his face still hidden, “for you it’s more of a granting. Giving you some-thing you’ve always wanted in a way you never imagined.”
“I want nothing from you. Isaac Parker sought righteous-ness and justice through Hell. I won’t do the same.”
“Who said anything about Hell?”
Sam Hane gasped, his throat suddenly constricting, something squeezing, strangling him. He dropped the shotgun, his hands tearing at his neck. He felt the coarseness of hemp rope at his throat. A noose. A hangman’s noose.
“Do not worry, Samuel,” the man in the chair said soothingly as Hane was lifted up by the noose, now digging deep into his skin, curls of smoke rising around the loop. “Many who followed me have suffered trials and tribula-tions. You’re no different. And this will give you something in common with those around you.”
Sam Hane would have screamed tears if he could have managed a breath.
“How in the name—”
Sam Hane smiled as words Isaac Parker hadn’t invoked in years caught in his throat. The Judge had been reviewing documents at his desk when Hane entered without warning. No one knew to warn Parker for no one had noticed the slender, rather handsome man pass through the courthouse and broach the stairs to the Judge’s chambers. Hane stood before Parker, a black long coat hiding what he wore beneath as well as the two-holster outfit that adorned his waist, a shining, almost glowing silver pistol in each. A black hat with a slouched brim occluded most of Hane’s face, except for two piercing blue eyes that unnerved Isaac Parker to no end.