The girl put the plates back down on the shelf and granted Albert a last perfunctory look of acknowledgment. “Well, have a good rest of your day,” she said, turning to the selection of fabrics farther down the shelf. Albert pretended to be very interested in a sack of henhouse feed for a moment, then moved to follow. He had one arrow left in his quiver.
“Hey, listen,” he said. “I don’t know if you’re doing anything next Sunday after church, but they’re gonna be delivering a big block of ice into town and … should be pretty cool to watch. You don’t usually get a chance to see that much ice all together in one place.”
“That doesn’t interest me,” she said.
“Yeah, no, me either; it’s gonna be stupid,” he responded, jumping ship on the idea.
Then all of a sudden she turned and looked directly at him, giving him her full attention. His courage swelled momentarily, until: “I just figured out where I’ve seen you,” she said. “Aren’t you the guy that backed out of that gunfight?”
“Uh, yeah … You were there?”
“Pretty much the whole town was there.”
“Whole town, yeah. Guess I’m a pretty popular guy.”
“No, not after that.”
Knowing he’d blown this encounter and feeling defensive, Albert reverted to grade-school mode.
“Oh, yeah, like you’re so popular,” he said.
“Actually, I was voted prom queen,” she responded.
“Well, okay, but … how many people were in your class? Like three?”
“Six.”
“Oh, actually, that’s a lot,” he admitted.
Albert spun on his heel and walked out, feeling like shit all over again.
And so it was for the next several days. No one could have accused Albert of not trying to get back on his feet in the dating department, but between the scant offerings available in Old Stump and Albert’s own romantic ineptitude, he found himself doomed to letdown after letdown.
There was young Betty Alden, the saloonkeeper’s daughter, who could outdrink any man and who ended up vomiting in Albert’s lap as they sat on the front porch of her home, looking at the stars. There was Georgia Behan, an attractive-enough young seamstress who, however, had a superfluous incisor growing from her left nostril, which made kissing her a painful and sometimes injurious experience. And there was Yao Ling, the lovely Chinese girl Albert had met on the road on his way back from Edward’s Shoe Repair, whom he had subsequently asked out to dinner. They met at Clara’s Restaurant, Old Stump’s one and only dining establishment, and it didn’t take long for the evening to go sour.
“So, tell me about your family,” Albert asked her as they were waiting to order. “What do your parents do?”
“Are you … are you serious?” she responded blankly.
“Well, yeah,” Albert said.
“My dad owns a business that manufactures brass light fixtures for upscale hotels.”
Albert was impressed. “Wow, really?”
Her expression instantly turned contemptuous. “No, he’s a fucking railroad builder, like every other Chinaman out here.”
Albert laughed nervously. “Oh. Ha. That other thing was so specific, I thought—well, I bet he’s a … really neat guy, though,” he offered lamely.
“Gosh, I wouldn’t know, I never see him,” she shot back with bitterness. “You know how many hours he works?”
“Um … all the live-long day?”
Yao Ling was on her feet and heading out the door within seconds.
“Wait—come on!” Albert shouted desperately. “Are you … even allowed to be offended by anything I do?”
But of all his botched attempts at moving on from Louise, perhaps the most uncomfortable was the blind date. One of the neighboring dirt farmers just across the range had said he had a daughter who was still unmarried and offered to set her up with Albert. Grateful for the thought, Albert accepted and suggested a lunch meeting at Clara’s. When he arrived, he found himself seated across the table from a twelve-year-old girl.
Marriage at a young age was, of course, not uncommon, but Albert wasn’t the type to go in for such an arrangement. It would be difficult to maintain a satisfying, mature relationship with a woman if you were constantly being asked to help with her homework. He tried to let her down easily.
“So, I uh … I know this sort of thing is totally acceptable out here on the frontier, but, uh … not gonna lie, something about it feels kinda weird.”
“My mother says I need to find a husband so I don’t become an old maid,” the girl said, shifting in her seat.
“Well, I … I think you got a few years ahead of you before that. How—how old are you?” asked Albert.
“I’ll be twelve in this many days,” she answered, proudly holding up eight fingers.
The waiter approached with his order pad. “Would you and your girlfriend like some dessert?” he asked.
“Oh, she’s not my girlfriend,” Albert answered a little too loudly. “Um, we’ll just take the check.” The waiter smiled and walked away.
“Why were you such a dick about that?” The girl scowled.
“What?”
“ ‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ ” she mocked. “You were so aggressive about it. What, do I embarrass you or something?”
“No, no, but I …” Albert searched. “I mean, this is a first date, so I think terms like girlfriend are a little premature. I just want to keep this open, y’know?”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry you’re feeling smothered,” she said, fixing him with a cold stare.
Albert gnawed a chunk of bread. “Y’know, I’m starting to see why you don’t have a husband.”
The funeral was a modest affair, though certainly average by the standards of the community. It was a perfect day for it too, with the dull slate sky overhead and the chilly breeze ghosting its way across the plains. Albert and his father stood around the open grave, flanked by Edward, Ruth, and several other townsfolk. Pastor Wilson led the ceremony, reading solemnly from scripture. “O merciful God, take this good woman into thine heavenly kingdom, that she may find peace and freedom from earthly suffering,” he intoned with as much life as the corpse itself.
Albert always wondered how he would feel when he lost a parent. He had assumed that George would be the first one to go, but it had turned out to be Elsie. And although she’d been in her seventies, it wasn’t old age that took her. Elsie had gone outside to fetch water from the well, when a cougar attacked. The only silver lining was that the cat’s initial pounce had knocked her down with such force that her skull cracked open as it slammed into a rock. Thus she was already dead when the cougar began feasting on her innards. George had rushed outside when he heard the ruckus and managed to scare the animal off with a few rounds from his Winchester, but it was too late.
And so he and Albert now stood side by side, father and son, their heads bowed low as they said their silent goodbyes to Elsie Stark, wife and mother. But although Albert felt all the pain associated with such a loss, what he felt the most was shame and confusion. I’m more broken up over Louise than I am over the loss of my mother. How the hell could that be? Was he so awash in self-pity and so twisted in his perspective that he’d become utterly callous to the outside world? Was he a terrible person? Or was it merely that Elsie been such a hardheaded pain-in-the-ass bitch when she was alive?
His torturous self-analysis was cut short by an empathetic hand on his shoulder.
“I’m really sorry, Albert,” Edward whispered sadly.
Albert turned and offered him a polite smile of gratitude. He then turned to his father. “You okay, Dad?”
George’s face was a stony-eyed mask. “She was a good solid woman,” he grunted. “I liked her.”
“Easy, Dad, I’m uncomfortable with all this emotion.”
Two cowboys approached, each one carrying a dead body slung over his shoulder. The corpses were covered in fresh blood from multiple bullet wounds. “Hey, we got a couple
more here,” said the first cowboy.
“Yeah, can we get in on this grave?” said the second.
Albert sighed. “Yeah, sure.” Resources were scarce on the frontier, so everyone shared what they had with the community whenever possible. The two cowboys tossed the bodies into the grave on top of Elsie, tipped their hats in appreciation, and ambled off.
Albert and Edward took their time as they strolled down the thoroughfare. They were early for church, and it was an unusually cool 92 degrees. Edward pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed at the beads of sweat on his forehead. His chunky physique didn’t serve him particularly well in such a hot climate, but Albert had never heard him complain. How the hell does he do it? He manages to find happiness in even the shittiest places.
A young boy raced past them, deftly using a stick to guide a rolling metal hoop down the street.
“I see kids everywhere with those stick hoops lately,” Albert observed.
“It’s gotta be bad for their brains, right?” said Edward.
“It has to be. Stunts their attention spans. There was an article in the paper.”
“I read that. It said it’s making them unable to focus on more long-term, thought-intensive tasks.”
“Exactly, it’s the death of innovation. I’m telling you, when intellectual progress comes to a screeching halt twenty years from now, you can thank the stick hoop.”
Suddenly Albert stopped dead in his tracks.
Halfway up the street stood the moustachery. It was a salon of sorts where a gentleman could go for a trim or a styling of his moustache. Moustaches were a sign of status and power, and the bigger, the bushier, the curlier a man’s moustache, the more he was to be respected. But what paralyzed Albert was the sight of the two individuals emerging from the building. One of them was Foy Ellison, the well-groomed, well-dressed owner of the establishment.
And the other was Louise. With her arm in his.
“Ho. Ly. Shit,” Albert cursed in shocked disbelief.
She had lied to him. Lied right to his face. Whether it had been in the interest of protecting his feelings or simply to avoid confrontation, he did not know. But the unpasteurized reality chewed his guts apart instantly. He hadn’t thought anything could be worse than Louise leaving him, but obviously there was one thing: Louise giving herself to another man.
“Oh, God …” Edward shifted uncomfortably as he regarded his friend with obvious sympathy.
“She told me she didn’t want to date anyone!” Albert sputtered. “She said she had to work on herself! Bull-fucking shit! And Foy! The owner of the moustachery! What. The. Fuck. If it were acceptable to be openly gay, Foy would have ten Englishmen living in his asshole.”
“Maybe you should grow a moustache,” Edward suggested.
“I can’t afford it,” Albert said with dismay. “The upkeep alone: the waxes, the oils, the creams. I don’t have the cash. My God. Fucking Foy.” Suddenly he had to be anywhere but here. “Come on, let’s go. Where’s Ruth? She coming to church?”
“No, she has a ten o’clock blumpkin,” Edward answered matter-of-factly.
Albert stared at him, confused. “What’s a blumpkin?”
“It’s when a man receives fellatio while he’s making stool. They just invented it in Italy, and it’s become popular here.” Edward smiled with pride in his awareness of world affairs.
“ ‘Receives fellatio’? You make it sound like a Communion service,” Albert said.
“Well, it’s just the process.”
“So, a guy gets his dick sucked while he’s taking a shit.”
“Albert, don’t use those words,” Edward said with indignation. “It diminishes Ruth’s work. She takes a lot of pride in doing a good job.”
“I’m … I’m sorry, Edward. I wasn’t thinking. It won’t happen again.”
“It’s okay.” Edward’s moonfaced smile reappeared, his nature easily forgiving as always. He brightened still further as he pointed past Albert’s shoulder. “Hey, look! It’s the ice!”
Albert turned. Sure enough, seven men were laboring to complete the arduous task of unloading a massive block of ice from the back of a wagon. The block had endured a long journey prior to its arrival on the frontier. The Tudor Ice Company of Boston, Massachusetts, would cut large blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds during winter in New England and then ship them across the country, where they could be sold to communities whose climates made it impossible to otherwise acquire ice, particularly during the summer months. It was an impressive sight indeed to watch these men struggle with a block that was nearly the size of the wagon that held it. Three of them handled the rope-and-pulley system that hoisted the ice off the cart, while the other four guided it down toward the open icehouse doors, where it would be prepped for further cutting. Albert watched with fascination, allowing himself a tiny satisfied smile as he recalled the girl in the general store who had rebuffed him. “See, this is fun. She missed out.”
A rope snapped. The ice fell and crushed the skull of one of the men. Thick red brain pasta spilled out into the street.
Albert and Edward screamed in horror and hurried to church.
“And make no mistake, my children,” Pastor Wilson droned on in his customarily tranquilizing tone, “there shall be swift and righteous justice on all free-grazers. No more shall they nibble wantonly at the teat of our coffers. And that’s just exactly like that part in the Bible that applies to that situation. Amen.”
“Amen,” echoed the congregation.
For the fifth time during that morning’s service, Albert glanced over his shoulder as inconspicuously as he could. Louise sat on the other side of the aisle, a few rows back. Foy sat beside her. He was a classically handsome dandy, with well-oiled hair and a big cocky asshole moustache stretching out so widely on either side that it was almost like his face had two hairy arms extended in a ta-da gesture. Ta-da! A colossal prick!
As if hearing the thought, Foy glanced in Albert’s direction. Albert quickly averted his gaze to the pulpit.
The pastor continued. “We would like to offer a heartfelt prayer for the family of James Addison, who was killed this morning while unloading the ice shipment. James, we’ll think of you lovingly this July as we sip the cold summer beverages for which you gave your life.”
Albert leaned over to Edward, whispering in disbelief, “They’re still gonna use the fuckin’ ice.”
“Before we end the service this morning,” Pastor Wilson went on, “we’d like to welcome two new members of our community: Lewis Barnes and his sister, Anna. They’ve just moved here to Old Stump, and they plan to build a farm, so we wish them the best of luck. That concludes today’s service. God bless you for another week, and there is a mountain lion warning in effect.”
As the congregation began to disperse, Albert curiously observed the new arrivals. They were an odd pair, these two siblings. The man, Lewis, looked as if God had lost a bet. His face was rough and pockmarked, his skin appearing less like flesh and more like the surface of a badly maintained dirt road peppered with horseshit. He was not a small man by any means, but his weaselly, rodent-like face looked as if it belonged on a skinnier, more frail body. Albert hoped for the fellow’s sake that he was either really smart or had a winning sense of humor. From the looks of him, neither was the case.
The woman was intriguing. How she could possibly be related to this guy was a mystery. She was certainly beautiful by any standard, and her face radiated a relaxed, tranquil quality that seemed too august for the hard world of the frontier. Yet as high above her dusty surroundings as she carried herself, she somehow did not seem uncomfortable with the disunion. Regardless, she would surely be over this crap town and on her way in a very short time.
The moustachery was perhaps the most well-appointed establishment in Old Stump. There were various photographs of distinguished-looking gentlemen lining the walls, each one sporting a more extravagant, flamboyant moustache than the last. There were big bushy moustaches that b
locked out the lower half of the face save for the tip of the chin, thickly waxed and oiled moustaches ending in sharp spirals at either end, and moustaches that gracefully melted into fat muttonchop sideburns. This Tuesday afternoon, there were a few patrons scattered about the place. One sat comfortably in the grooming chair, getting a moustache trim; another examined an array of waxes, oils, and creams; a third was engaged in conversation with Foy himself.
“I would say you could try oiling it into a fine curl,” Foy suggested, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together for emphasis. “Your moustache definitely has the body for it.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about that, but I sorta like it a little messy, y’know? Sorta fun?” the customer answered with a conflicted tone.
“Well, if that’s what you’re going for, I’d use the cream, and I would definitely let it grow.”
“See, I kinda wanna do that.”
“And, you know what, I see the hesitation on your face, but, trust me, you could do that.”
“Like shoulder length?”
“Do it. You’ll thank me.”
“See, I’ve always wanted to do shoulder length, but I’m worried I don’t have the chin for it.”
“You have the chin for it,” Foy assured him.
“Okay, wow, you just gave me, like, a whole bunch of confidence.”
“Try the cream for a few weeks, and let me know how it goes.”
“I will, thank you. I’m excited now! I want it to grow really fast!” The man hurried out the door.
As it swung back, Louise gracefully sauntered in, all bouncing blond curls and coquettish smiles for her wealthy new boyfriend. “Hi!” She beamed, throwing her arms around him.
“Hey, you.” Foy grinned. He grabbed her by the waist and kissed her long and hard. She reciprocated momentarily, then pulled away as she swung her hips back and forth, flashing her most seductively girlish smile.
“So, the fair’s coming up soon, and I thought maybe we could go dress shopping later,” she said, batting her long lashes.
Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West: A Novel Page 5