F*ckload of Shorts

  Tip knelt beside Charlie on the floor. He tore the hem from his companion’s clothing and tried to staunch the flow of blood with Charlie’s own shirt. His partner looked up at him with hatred in his eyes. “Why didn’t you help me, you fuckin coward?”

  Tip gagged on the smells of blood and vomit mixing and filling the car. “Shh, Charlie, don’t talk, now.”

  Charlie tried to spit at him, but only drooled bloody saliva down his chin. “Chickenshit backshooter,” he managed. “Never shoulda hooked up with such a yellow-ass-mutt. Fuckin left you to die’s what I shoulda done.”

  The detective looked at Warden, disappointed as if with a child. He started to speak, “Felix, I believe we can work something out.” Felix Vincent Warden waited for his offer. The Pinkerton looked first at Tip wiping a string of drool from his chin and Charlie bleeding and bubbling shit all over the car floor. “I’ll give you one of em.”

  Supported between two men, Charlie Holland was led off the train into a circle of other hoods and train passengers come out to watch, gathered around a telegraph pole. Two men were struggling with fashioning a noose and Charlie slumped on the ground waiting for them to finish. Felix Warden called out for haste, “Git him up before he bleeds to death.”

  The Pinkerton poked Tip in the ribs with his Colt. Tip stood from his seat and walked to the front of the car, watching the mob through the windows, feeling a mix of gratitude and shame that Charlie was dying and not himself. His captor and savoir led him all the way to the engine where the driver regarded them warily before turning his attention again to the lynching. The Pinkerton spoke, “What are you waiting for, get this heap moving.”

  The engineer didn’t look at him. “Can’t. Rails blocked.” The detective put his head out and inspected the track for himself.

  “So get your men out there to clear it.”

  “Pinch it. Let ‘em watch.” He turned to look at Tip. “Shoulda let ‘em take both.”

  “Ain’t your concern. Just get us moving along, pronto.”

  “Case you hadn’t noticed, half my passengers are out there to watch. I ain’t leaving without them. Why don’t you just go back to your seat, you don’t wanna see it for yourself?”

  The Pinkerton motioned for Tip to step off the train and he did. Tip fell to his knees when he landed, and the detective put a hand under his arm to help him to his feet. “If you don’t want to die with your friend tonight, you’d best help me clear this track. Soon as he’s stretched, they’re gonna want you.”

  They worked together, clearing away the barricade the mob had hastily placed across the track. They’d lit a fire in front to make it more visible and simultaneously obscure the shoddy obstacle they’d erected. The blaze was reduced to a few smouldering, mostly smoking, patches of timber. It was primarily still-green tree branches and even the trunks of a half dozen saplings lying in a pile.

  “Amateurs,” said the Pinkerton.

  A loud cry rang out when Charlie was lifted to his feet and assisted atop a patiently waiting ass. Charlie began to vocalize his final thoughts. They mostly consisted of objects and animals those gathered round were advised to fornicate with and how he wished he’d killed more of them. He claimed further that Robert Manuse had died like a coward, begging for his life and even sucking on Charlie’s cock for mercy before he’d shot him.

  It wasn’t true. They’d been holed up in a cave for a week, hiding out from a botched train job, when the posse had found them. Tip had been taking a shit across the way when the popping sounds of gunfire had sent him scrambling down the hill, goodbye forever to the gang.

  He’d been a road agent before joining up with up with the McKinny-Jan gang that’d failed to stop a train outside Rawlins. He’d been party to bushwhacking and rustling and cheating at cards, but it was an attempted robbery that had brought this end. He and Charlie had busted up the tracks ten miles outside town, but a UP lineman discovered the damaged rails and had the train stopped before it got anywhere near them.

  Union Pacific had a posse formed and out before nightfall with an inflated bounty placed on them, and the gang had disappeared up into the mountains. A week after, he’d heard the shooting and began his pilgrimage east without even stopping to wipe his ass. Weeks later, he’d chanced upon Charlie again at a saloon they both knew in Kansas City and heard confirmation from him the tale of the shootout he’d read about in newspapers. A railroad detective and a citizen were killed in the ambush, and Jensen and Collins shot dead from their own company. McKinny and Jan had escaped far as he knew.

  Charlie claimed pure dumb luck had saved him that day and that fate had brought them back together that night. He bought Tip a round and a whore and later claimed innocence and bewilderment when they’d found the Pinkerton waiting for them in the bath house.

  Upon arrest, the detective had advised quiet if they wanted to survive the trip back to Rawlins, but apparently word had got out they’d been apprehended. Telegraph messages outran any horse, carriage or train. Newspapers were probably printing stories of their capture already. Fuckin Charlie’d testify to that much.

  His hands bound behind him and the noose placed around his neck, Charlie was made to sit atop the miserable looking ass who could not then be coaxed to move. Two men pulled on the stubborn animal’s reigns and a third pushed from behind while Charlie abused them with words.

  Finally the reluctant ass took three steps and then stopped, leaving Charlie, stretched taut, holding onto the animal’s hind quarters with his heels and wriggling his head in the rope, until one of the men brushed his feet off. Charlie swung low, his feet missing the ground by inches. He made a wide arc and as he swung back, he kicked his heels in a rhythm that added to his momentum. He was finally able to grab the telegraph pole with his heels and holding himself still, wriggled his head with savage determination until one of the mob knocked his feet loose and Charlie commenced to swinging again. With each swing, the knot slipped a hair. At the zenith of the fourth swing, he fell through the noose and landed on his back. The rope, which had torn both of his ears away from his head, swung empty, garnished with his right extremity and a long strand of hair. The left fell in the dirt. Charlie lay on the ground, heaving wet, broken breaths.

  The Pinkerton shook his head. “Amateurs.”

  They had cleared away the barrier and stood with the engineer who chuckled at the spectacle. Tip couldn’t take his eyes off his partner who was left lying in the dust, in shock and too raw and scraped about the neck to cry out, while the mob hurried to fashion a better noose.

  Felix Vincent Warden motivated his mob to “make a good one this time.” And after a spell, the second version was fitted and cinched tight on Charlie’s ragged throat. He slumped, barely upright, atop the mule who’d been cajoled back to the spot beneath the crossbeam of the telegraph pole. Again when the animal was slapped it refused to budge and the same three men set about seducing it away from its spot, but to no avail. Of a sudden, a fourth man stepped forward and shot the dumb animal behind its ear. The mule fell to the earth and Charlie Holland dropped with it, but stopped short of the ground.

  Again, he kicked with both his feet and again he managed to get a swing going, but Felix Harden called for a stop to that and two men grabbed his kicking feet and tugged without syncopation until there was a pop. Charlie stopped squirming, went slack and vacated what remained in his bowels.

  The gathered crowd became nearly as still as Charlie, whose only motion now was prompted by a dry and dusty wind carrying the smell of him back toward Tip. The Pinkerton urged the engineer to prepare to leave and as the onlookers began filing silently back aboard the train, he and Tip stood up front with the driver watching Charlie tilt and sway.

  Tip realized that the detective had been wrong. Charlie’s messy exit had left the mob uninterested in his blood and they pulled away without further incident. Several of the hooded men even set about clearing away brush still remaining on the track and others gallantly assisted ladies back to their seats
. As he retook his own seat in the otherwise empty car, Tip stared out the window, but the light inside obscured the night and he was left with his own reflection to study.

  They were still six hours from Rawlins and maybe six days to execution. The Pinkerton seemed to read his thoughts and offered, “You never know, sometimes a judge gets sick or lost making the trip and another one’s gotta be called in. Could take weeks.”

  Tip considered that as the train pulled away. He glanced back for a final look at Charlie and the detective snorted. “You don’t owe that cocksucker nothing. Gave you up five minutes after we caught him in the hills outside Rawlins. Said he knew you had an uncle in Kentucky, figured you’d be headed that way.” Tip took the information stoically. It made sense. The Pinkerton watched the subtle changes in Tip’s expression and nodded in agreement. “Fuck him. He deserved it.”

  The Adversary

  And it entered into his body like water, and like oil into his bones.

  – Psalm109:18

  Since word of the spread of Tecumseh’s scourge, its destination and inevitable path made obvious, panic had seized the wise and charlatanism the foolish. Repentance, as ever, sucked hind teat.

  The witch had been holding ceremonies. Sacrifices. Poultry mostly. She blessed and hexed for a fee and she’d send and deliver messages across the Stygian chasms separating worlds. All of her arts were brought over from the Dark Continent and she practiced in the woods under penalty of death by the Law of Moses, which the Reverend Chalfont Avery was charged with upholding now in the face of Armageddon. He had been present at her execution, a willing and enthusiastic participant, but the kicking feet of the blasphemer brought not the warmth of God to his soul, so they torched her home to mirror the flames of Hades and on them he warmed his hands.

  The fervor for purging had hit an all time high by Avery’s measure and every arcane law of superstition was dusted off and seemed to shine with special relevance to the here and now because where was God? The Northern Philistines were paving a scorched path directly to them through autumnal Georgia; a season of wrath to match any Biblical account and Avery, try as he might to conjure himself Moses descending Sinai and meeting the orgy ‘round the golden heifer, could not escape the thought that he was merely Balaam leaving behind his conversant ass and extending a hand of brotherhood to the Angel of Death, I have started without you.

  When Chalfont was a youth, and the Apostle Naaman Mosley had first called him into the service of an acolyte, he had felt the Spirit’s breath in his own lungs as if awakened from dormancy. The Apostle had recognized the gift in Chalfont, called it out of him and set into motion a great and dynamic ministry. He had performed signs and wonders and prophesied, cast out dark spirits and baptized thousands. They had come to him from a hundred miles in every direction for the words of God that fell from his lips and the touch of power in his hands and Chalfont Avery’s name was known all the way from Athens to New Orleans.

  But now he was empty.

  The authority that had coursed through his speech and actions, that he had eventually mistaken for his own and then behaved in such a manner with encouragement from a silver-tongued politician whose appointment to the state senate Chalfont had helped secure with enthusiastic endorsements and inspired editorials printed in the papers, that authority was null. Once established, the partnership with the government man was influential and lucrative, but in retrospect Chalfont had been intoxicated with infallibility in tandem with the way the sway of his gift had faltered. But no one saw it when he had led a prayer on the battlefield at Chickamauga and thoughts of his own political office would not have seemed outlandish, though by Kennesaw Mountain he was mostly gassy fervor and untethered moral authority.

  That untethering had come up in the public rebuke given to his face in front of his own congregation by the Apostle who’d traveled all the way to Athens to deliver it. But by that time his spiritual dipsomania had claimed Avery’s senses and he was not inclined to listen to the contrary and jealousy-fueled ranting of the dispossessed and failed. Now, the Apostle’s last words to him hung between his ears filling the depression where once the Spirit had resided and spoken an unstopped spring of wisdom for him to translate into language and wield his flesh around. “He has removed his Spirit from you and changed your name to Ichabod.”

  The Apostle had collapsed afterward. His body dropped like Ananias or Sapphira right there in the sanctuary, and he had taken the voice of God with him. From the pulpit Chalfont had watched him fall and felt closed inside with the void by the ornate, church doors as soon as his mentor had expired. He had known the sensation at once, though it was terribly and utterly new. Soon he would see Sheol and know not the bosom of Abraham. He was a goat now, and would no more be so had he horns protruding from his forehead.

  Members of the church had rushed to the Apostle’s side. A man named Barnabus had knelt and taken the Apostle’s crown into his lap. He had placed his own head near the peaceful face on the floor, then looked up and confirmed to all what was apparent to Avery, The Apostle was dead.

  Chalfont had retreated immediately to his hometown of Gilboa sighting grief over the death of his dearest friend and had no sooner arrived than the wrath of God had rained in cannonade fire upon Atlanta and the faithful in exile had changed its significance from New Jerusalem to Babylon in their pleas and railings against the tide of reckoning washing toward them from the north and west.

  The territorial Marshal had arrived at his door with a proposition - clear the scrub, dispose of the brush and the fire will not consume us for His judgment falls on the just and the unjust alike, but while Lot’s wife became salt, even Nineveh was spared – and Chalfont had been deputized and slain with fervor to catch the neglectful eye of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but His jealousy was attached to the Babylonian whore with her mouth round Chalfont, and He remained aloof.

  Wrath seemed preferable to indifference and Chalfont had set himself up to be noticed.

  On the first morning of the third week since his return, he woke with a start well before dawn, fleeing the same vision that had pursued him through his sleep ever since they’d stretched the African witch. In the dream, she’d addressed him as Simon Sorcerer and not Simon Peter. Worse, he had answered her as if it were his given and accepted name. He woke now, slick with dread, and collapsed there on his knees beside the bed. He cried out to the power of God, but received no deliverance and no answer. He rocked and heaved and hyperventilated in his fervent pleading for a divine word, but none came.

  At last he rose, stumbled out of his house and crossed the packed earth to his stable, fed and dressed his mare for light travel. Within the hour streaks of grey had shot through the cracks in the black and he discerned the final crest of the hills that led to the place where she’d lived and died.

  The tall grass gave way to loamy pathways from the dismantled livestock pens to the blackened place where the cabin had previously stood. An acrid, smoky smell hung in the air still, held low in the atmosphere as if it were a place that the wind avoided. His horse whined and Chalfont dismounted. He led her to the outermost edges of fence and loosely tethered her there, before continuing toward the tree at the center of the property.

  The fire that had reduced the cabin to a collection of charred sticks huddled like spent matches about a roughly rectangular lot had not touched the tree, which stood defiantly an iridescent green even in winter against the scorched, ashen earth and bloody haze of sunrise spreading across the sky. The tree’s shade was vast and inky and once beneath, he trembled slightly. Near the trunk, suspended a meter off the ground, the nubs of her feet, ravaged by wild beasts, were just visible.

  He remembered now the way she’d cried out upon seeing him. Her bewilderment at the transaction gone sideways turning to stark fear and then bright, black anger, outraged by the devil’s betrayal. She cursed him in a dozen heathen languages and licked blasphemy at him betwixt her fingers before he’d claimed her tongue. The posse dropped
their pretense and held her down and stripped away her clothes. She’d struggled beneath them, in agony or ecstasy it was difficult to differentiate. Franklin had clapped his hand over her mouth to halt the profanity and he’d looked over his shoulder in hesitation at Chalfont, who’d nodded, then turned his back on her as they’d sawed away at the pale, flapping appendage, finally claiming it in a tug that nearly choked her dead before she could be hung proper. The meat had fallen beneath the spot she’d kicked above while the horse tugged and eventually left her levitating over, angry tendrils atwitch, searching for a suitable spot in which to plant themselves and grow again.

  As he approached her now, he caught movement in the circle of yellowing grass beneath her corpse as if the tongue had found purchase and sprouted. What he saw when he was near enough to discern stopped his breath halfway in so that he choked when he remembered the mechanics of breathing again five seconds later. An abominable trinity of cottonmouths writhing there, tangled in a blind sex frenzy. So thick was their lust that they were not disturbed by him and did not yield their ground, and he was forced to kick them with his boot from the spot. They landed in three separate spaces six feet apart and were immediately released from her spell. They slid and slipped away, seemingly ignorant and uninterested in what had preceded. He looked up at her face, eyes gone with the birds, fingers curled into hooks. He took out his knife to cut her down thinking to bury her and end the tormenting nightmares, but as soon as he’d laid his hands upon her body, he swooned.

  There was a pressure on his right side so that Chalfont turned his head and beheld the fingers of his hand wrapped tightly around a squirming serpent which coiled likewise around his arm and attached itself by teeth to his throat. A smell as if crimson had an odor crept up his nostrils and lodged in his brainpan and he heard tongues that he could not interpret. He stood atop a hill and saw from the western horizon a spill of smoke rolling over the land and the hungry lick of flames, emissaries of the inferno they announced blacking out the sun. From this advance a sound eventually arrived, percussive and predatory. The beat a rumbling, grinding rhythm like the turning of a great mill that split off into scores of separate swells becoming a crescendo.