McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

by Michael Chabon

  She referred to Deputy Marshal Webster as “Carl” and the one from the Oklahoman said, “Oh, you two are on intimate terms now? You don’t mind he’s just a kid? Has he visited you here at the hotel?” Faye was staying a few days at the Georgian in Henryetta. The other reporters in the room would tell the Oklahoman to keep quiet for Christ sake, anxious for Faye to get to the gunplay.

  “As I told you,” Faye said, “I was in the doorway to the kitchen. Frank’s over here to my left, and Carl’s opposite him but sitting down, his legs stretched out in his cowboy boots. I couldn’t believe how calm he was.”

  “What’d you have on, Faye?”

  The Oklahoman interrupting again, some of the other reporters groaning.

  “I had on a pink and red kimono Frank got me at Kerr’s in Oklahoma City. I had to wear it whenever he came.”

  “You have anything on under it?”

  Faye said, “None of your beeswax.”

  The Oklahoman said his readers had a right to know such details of how a gun moll dressed. This time the other reporters were quiet, like they wouldn’t mind hearing such details themselves, until Faye said, “If this big mouth opens his trap one more time I’m through and y’all can leave.” She said, “Now where was I?”

  “Frank was leaning on the table.”

  “That was it. He looked over at me like he was gonna say something, and right then Carl said, ‘Frank?’ He said, ‘Draw your pistol and lay it there on the table.’”

  The reporters wrote it down in their notebooks and then waited as Faye took a sip of iced tea.

  “I told you Frank had his back to Carl? Now I see him turn his face to his shoulder and say to him, ‘Do I know you from someplace?’ Maybe thinking of McAlester, Carl an ex-convict looking to earn the reward money. Frank asks him, ‘Have we met or not?’ And Carl says, ‘If I told you, I doubt you’d remember.’ Then—this is where Carl says, ‘Frank, I’m a Deputy United States Marshal. I’ll tell you one more time to lay your pistol on the table.’”

  A reporter said, “Faye, I know they did meet. I’m from the Okmulgee Daily Times and I wrote the story about it. Was six years ago to the month.”

  “What you’re doing,” Faye said, “is holding up my getting to the good part.” Messing up her train of thought, too.

  “But the circumstances of how they met,” the reporter said, “could have something to do with this story.”

  “Would you please,” Faye said, “wait till I’m done?”

  It gave her time to tell the next part: how Frank had no choice but to draw his gun, this big pearl-handled automatic, from inside his coat and lay it on the edge of the table, right next to him. “Now as he turns around,” Faye said, starting to grin, “this surprised look came over his face. He sees Carl sitting there, not with a gun in his hand but Photoplay magazine. Frank can’t believe his eyes. He says, ‘Jesus Christ, you don’t have a gun?’ Carl pats the side of his chest where his gun’s holstered under his coat and says, ‘Right here.’ Then he says, ‘Frank, I want to be clear about this so you understand. If I pull my weapon I’ll shoot to kill.’” Faye said to the reporters, “In other words, the only time Carl Webster draws his gun it’s to shoot somebody dead.”

  It had the reporters scribbling in their notebooks and making remarks to each other, the one from the Daily Times saying now, “Listen, will you? Six years ago Frank Miller held up Deering’s drugstore in Okmulgee and Carl Webster was there. Only he was known as Carlos then, he was still a kid. He stood by and watched Frank Miller shoot and kill an Indian from the tribal police happened to come in the store, a man Carl Webster must’ve known.” The reporter looked at Faye and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think the drugstore shooting could’ve been on Carl Webster’s mind.”

  Faye said, “I can tell you something else about that.”

  But now voices were chiming in, commenting and asking questions about the Okmulgee reporter’s views:

  “Carl carried it with him all these years?”

  “Did he remind Frank Miller of it?”

  “You’re saying the tribal cop was a friend of his?”

  “Both from Okmulgee, Carl thinking of becoming a lawman?”

  “Carl ever say he was out to get Frank Miller?”

  “This story’s bigger’n it looks.”

  Faye said, “You want to hear something else happened?

  “How Carl was eating an ice-cream cone that time and what Frank did?”

  They sat on the porch sipping tequila at the end of the day, insects out there singing in the dark. A lantern hung above Virgil’s head so he could see to read the newspapers on his lap.

  “Most of it seems to be what this little girl told.”

  “They made up some of it.”

  “Jesus, I hope so. You haven’t been going out with her, have you?”

  “I drove down, took her to Purity a couple times.”

  “She’s a pretty little thing. Has a saucy look about her in the pictures, wearing that kimona.”

  “She smelled nice, too,” Carl said.

  Virgil turned his head to him. “I wouldn’t tell Bob Cardell that. One of his marshals sniffing around a gun moll.” He waited, but Carl let that one go. Virgil looked at the newspaper he was holding. “I don’t recall you were ever a buddy of Junior Harjo’s.”

  “I’d see him and say hi is all.”

  “The Daily Times has you two practically blood brothers. What you did was avenge his death. They wonder if it might even be the reason you joined the marshals.”

  “Yeah, I read that,” Carl said.

  Virgil put the Daily Times down and slipped the Oklahoman out from under it. “But now the Oklahoma City paper says you shot Frank Miller ’cause he took your ice-cream cone that time in the drugstore. They trying to be funny?”

  “I guess,” Carl said.

  “They could make up a name for you, as smart-aleck newspapers do, start calling you Carl Webster, the Ice Cream Kid?”

  “What if they do?”

  “I’m getting the idea you like this attention.”

  Virgil saying it with some concern and Carl giving him a shrug. Virgil picked up another paper from the pile. “Here they quote the little girl saying Frank Miller went for his gun and you shot him through the heart.”

  “I thought they have her saying, ‘straight through the heart,’” Carl said. He turned to see his old dad staring at him with a solemn expression. “I’m kidding with you. What Frank did, he tried to bluff me. He looked toward Faye and called her name thinking I’d look over. But I kept my eyes on him, knowing he’d pick up his Colt. He came around with it and I shot him.”

  “As you told him you would,” Virgil said. “Every one of the newspapers played it up, your saying, ‘If I draw my weapon I shoot to kill.’ You tell ’em that?”

  “The only one I told was Frank Miller,” Carl said. “It had to’ve been Faye told the papers.”

  “Well, that little girl sure tooted your horn for you.”

  “She only told what happened.”

  “All she had to. It’s the telling that did it, made you a famous lawman overnight. You think you can carry a load like that?”

  “I was born to,” Carl said, starting to show himself.

  It didn’t surprise his old dad. Virgil picked up his glass of tequila and raised it to his boy, saying, “God help us showoffs.”

  The General

  By CAROL EMSHWILLER

  They had conquered his people, then raised him

  as one of their own. How far would they be willing

  to go to destroy their own creation?

  One of the enemy has escaped into the mountains. An important general. He knows our language, he knows our ways, but we don’t know his nor where his men are, nor even if there are any of his men left at all. We were holding him in our maximum-security facilities and we had thought to torture him until he told us what he knew of his own army. We had called in others to torture him because we don’
t believe in torture, but he escaped before they arrived.

  There’s a large reward for his capture. For a sum like this, even his own men would turn him in. He can’t count on anybody. There’s no way that he can survive very long anyway. It’s too cold and everybody is on our side around here. Most likely they’ll fight among themselves over the reward. There’ll be a few more of us dead.

  We had dressed him in orange. He’ll have to steal some clothes. We hope he won’t kill any of us to get them. He must be very stupid to try to escape in a place like this and at this season. The weather can only get worse. But perhaps death is better than our (deliberately) rat-infested, latrineless cells. He has been trained by us in our own schools to laugh at death. Most likely his body is already out there somewhere. We’ve sent local children to search the rocks and bushes. They know the area better even than our experts. We’ll give them pennies and salt for any clues they pick up. We warned them if they find him and he’s not dead, they should run, as he is extremely dangerous and has probably obtained or made a weapon.

  I’m on a trail now. At first I just headed out, not following any road or path, but there’s no way to cross these mountain passes and not be on one. Every now and then there’s a hut. This time of year they’re all empty. I don’t dare spend the night in any. I stole clothes from one, long underwear, and a worn-out sheepskin jacket. I found a knit cap. They shaved my head so I needed a good hat. Everything I took was worn out and smelled bad, but I wear them anyway. I stole food and a blanket. I was wearing leg irons. At the hut I found tools to break them off. I’ll be able to go a little faster now. I stole a sickle but dropped it later. I don’t want to be tempted to lash out at anyone, especially not with a sickle.

  I sleep several yards from the trail in any handy sheltered spot. Or if there are scattered boulders I cover myself with the blanket and lie along them as if I were just another stone. I haven’t met a single person up here, but I don’t dare relax.

  I sleep the sleep of exhaustion. I’ll think to myself: This is a good spot, and that’s all I know until I wake up.

  I’m aware that I’m walking through great beauty but if I sit down to appreciate it for a minute I fall asleep. Sometimes the moon has risen and I lie back and think to look at the sky and take some time to realize I’m in a wondrous place and this is a luminous moment, but no sooner do I have that thought than I’m asleep.

  Notices have been put up on every corner: WANTED REWARD. Wild and dangerous man. Medium height, shaved head, dark eyes. He’d as soon kill you as look at you. By now he may have weapons. If you harbor him or give him food, you’ll be considered as guilty as he is. There’s a microchip imbedded in his shoulder where he can neither see it or reach it. Anyone who has removed it will be considered as traitorous as he is. The sentence for helping him is death.

  The irony is, we brought him up ourselves in our own military schools. We thought contact with us would civilize him, but he’s no more civilized than he was at the age of nine when we took him in. At that time he said he’d kill us all and, in spite of all these years in our care, that’s what he still wants to do.

  We thought he would soon see that life with us was preferable to the primitive ways of his own people. We had thought he would realize our superiority. Anybody with any sense, we thought, even a child with any sense at all, could see we had the science, the money, the schools, the workforce, the wealth. . . . And we were ready to share our wealth with him. He was, after all, at the top of his graduating class. The top! We were surprised that a savage child had beaten out our own. We took it as a sign we could mold the wild ones to our civilized ways if we caught them in time. We were glad to have him on our side. Until he defected, we suspected nothing.

  I wake with a child looking down on me—so bundled up I wonder how she can move at all. A dirty child but I’m dirtier. At first I think a boy, but then I think, girl. I see her skirt and coarse hand-knit wooly petticoat hanging below it. I’m not a good judge of the ages of children, but I’d guess about nine or ten years old. Beside her there’s a bundle of sticks she’s been gathering.

  I distrust everybody. I wake up in a rage as usual, ready to strike out. I think, Here’s one of them, but then she smiles and I smile back.

  I can’t help groaning as I try to sit up. I’m always so stiff, waking after a day of climbing. (When I was younger I never had this problem. I suppose it’ll only get worse.) I ask her, “What are you doing way up here this time of year?” and she asks, “What are you?”

  Her name is Loo. I tell her I’m Sang. Not too much of a lie, especially if you take it to mean blood and pronounce it “sans,” and now I am sans everything. (For a long time I was called rubbish.)

  It’s been three days and we still haven’t captured him, therefore sweeping changes from the top on down. Higher-ups have been brought in. Those in charge are no longer in charge. How can one half-starved man, possibly wearing orange, and with a microchip, have escaped us all? We have the know-how and the wherewithal.

  Loo won’t go home without more sticks. I help her. She’s all smiles when she sees how much I get. I shoulder a dead log, too. I think to chop it up when we get... wherever. First we climb on the main trail and then turn off on a smaller path, so small you have to know it’s there to follow it.

  We come to a hut of stone and weathered wood. It looks like part of the mountain. It’s a hut as if out of a painting of a troll’s house in a book of fairy tales. The roof slopes almost to the ground. I remember fairy tales from before I was taken, otherwise I’d not know about them.

  Loo’s grandma greets us at the door. I look past her and see it’s like a troll’s hut inside, too. Heavy handmade furniture, a worn-down board floor, a squat black stove, a squat black kettle steaming . . .

  Loo and her grandma must have gotten marooned up here someway. I don’t ask how. The grandma has a hard time walking from the stove to the doorway. Perhaps she could no longer climb down. Yet to leave her here alone with just a child for help . . . I don’t see how they get by. They don’t look in good shape.

  I don’t go in. I stand in the doorway. I say, “I am your enemy. I’m a fugitive. You risk your life if you take me in. I have a chip imbedded in my shoulder.” I tell the grandma about the reward though I don’t say how much. I hardly dare. It’s a sum hard to resist. It would make anyone rich for life.

  For answer the old woman motions me in, motions me to sit down, motions me to take off my jacket and mittens, and then hands me a cup of strong strange tea. It tastes of pine needles. They have two rooms. Two nanny goats stay in with them.

  I say, “You don’t realize.”

  The grandma says, “I realize.” Her voice is a breathy growl.

  She shows me men’s clothes hanging behind the door, but she won’t talk about them. In fact she’ll hardly talk at all. Just gives me stew full of tiny bones. Then she gets out a paring knife and motions me to lean over the table. I do. It’ll give her a chance to cut my throat if she feels like it.

  (I had covered my shoulder first thing with pieces of foil from the dump on the outskirts of town so they couldn’t home in on me.)

  Afterward she makes me a different sort of tea for the pain. The way I’m slurping down every odd-tasting thing she hands me, she could poison me in a minute, and I’ll bet she has whatever it takes to do it.

  She wraps the chip back in my foil and puts it by the door. She says, “Take this out on the trail tomorrow. Throw it over the cliff.”

  They make me a bed under the table I just bled on. I think to thank them but, warm and full of hot food, I fall asleep before I can get the words out.

  We’ve sent out six units. We’ve commandeered the first huts along several trails as base camps. One unit has discovered a place where someone spent the night. No one is on the mountain at this time of year so who but the general could have slept there? We moved all our units to this one mountain trail.

  An early snow falls all night and is still going on in the mor
ning. I go out in it. I’ll not do as the grandma said. I’ll get rid of that chip at the top of one of the peaks. I’ll unwrap it so as to give them a false clue. Useless and foolish, I know, but I want to do it anyway. Perhaps if it’s so hard to get to they’ll not bother. They’ll think I’m already dead up there and let me be. They’ll say it’s just like me to die at the top of something. I wish I’d saved my orange suit to use as a flag.

  I say I may not be back tonight, but I’ll be back soon. I’m thinking it’ll take all day to climb a mountain even if I’m more than halfway up right here.

  The grandma bundles me in hand-knit scarves. She winds them around me under my stolen jacket. I don’t know if I can climb in all this. She wants to give me dried acorn cakes but I don’t let her. I don’t believe they have much food any more than they have much firewood. Soon as I get back I’ll chop up more.

  The grandma lends me her staffs. She uses two. I’ll need two also. “Bring them back,” she says.

  We’ve found the chip, brown from his blood. One unit climbed to the top of the mountain thinking what the General can do, they can do. Thinking he would be there laughing down at them. Or dead, but with a smile at having forced them to climb there. He was no doubt laughing, but he wasn’t there. One member of the unit fell on the rocks near the top and broke his ankle. One got altitude sickness. They have been flown out. We appointed new squad leaders.

  There’s fish. I caught some myself on the way up when the trail dipped down beside a creek. I ate them raw. Now I catch more on the way back to the cabin.

  When I get there, Loo says she saw a group of men in white suits filing up the trail. They’re two days’ climb away. Loo takes me yet farther up into a cave, well off the path. Rattlesnakes sleep there. If I make a fire they’ll wake up.

  There’s already a bed of old rotten hay. Loo gives me a bundle of food. She insists. I say I’ll eat rattlesnake. She says, “Yes, but this, too.” Then she chops off the heads of several big ones to take back to the grandma. They’re so cold they don’t come to. “In the morning I’ll bring some back fried,” she says. She leaves me the ax and goes.