Killing Mr. Sunday

by Bill Brooks

  He didn’t want to say.

  “Are you leaving me and the children?”

  “No,” he said. “Well, yes, for a short time. Just

  until I can find something for us, then I’ll come and

  get you and the girls.”

  He went first to El Paso, for he heard it was a wild

  open town bursting with opportunity. Plenty of trade

  and money to be made both sides of the border. It

  seemed as good a place as any to get a fresh start. But

  after he’d spent his small poke on tequila and whores,

  he came to realize the only skills he had to offer that

  rough border town were those of a gunfighter. And,

  too, if a man needed to slip across into Mexico ahead

  of the law, well, it was right there. He scouted for

  prospects.

  A local businessman had run for county sheriff and

  was defeated by what he bodaciously called “a no-

  good son of a bitch!” But it wasn’t merely a political

  rivalry that existed between the two men—there was

  also a woman involved, as there almost always was.

  With stealth and planning that is inborn in certain

  men who are called to the profession of shootist, Fal-

  lon Monroe approached the businessman and made

  an offer.

  “How you mean take care of?” the businessman

  asked over a plate of chili that made his forehead

  sweat.

  “I guess I could try and scare him off, talk him

  into resigning and leaving town,” Fallon said in a

  half-joking manner.

  “Scare! Shit, Bill Perk don’t scare. He’s too damn

  ignorant to scare.”

  “I never yet met a completely fearless man,” Fallon

  said. “Every man is afraid of something. You just got

  to find out what that something is, and it almost al-

  ways is his own death.”

  “He’ll put a bullet through your heart and piss in

  the hole it leaves.”

  “You want him gone? That’s all I’m asking.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred dollars.”

  “That’s a lot of money considering I could do it

  myself.”

  “If you could have done it yourself, you would

  have.” Fallon had that other natural trait of a good

  gunfighter: awareness of how much grit a man did or

  did not have. The businessman had soft hands and a

  soft belly and no heart for bloody encounters. He

  wore fine suits and silk cravats and his expensive

  boots didn’t show any mud on them. Here sat a fellow

  who wouldn’t fight even over the thing he loved most:

  money.

  The businessman pulled a small, neatly folded ker-

  chief from his pocket and wiped his forehead and

  beak—real dainty, Fallon noted.

  “I could get a lot of others to do it for less than a

  hundred,” he said, always the businessman.

  “Maybe,” Fallon said, “but my work is guaran-

  teed.”

  “A hundred,” the man said.

  Since it was his first professional job, Fallon acqui-

  esced and took the offer—not so much because of

  just the money, but to see how he’d like it—killing a

  man for the money. He’d killed plenty for free, but

  that was because the army and the Indians hadn’t

  given him any choice in the matter.

  “Point him out is all you have to do besides pay me

  the hundred,” he said.

  “Deal,” the man said, and pointed him out—a

  lanky cautious-looking cuss who came into the saloon

  an hour later. He wore big Mexican spurs and stood

  under a wide-brimmed peaked hat tipped incautiously

  low on one side with a turkey feather sticking from its

  band. Shaggy auburn moustaches draped the man’s

  mouth. And in that smoky light it was plain to see he

  waxed his Vandyke to a fine point the way it glistened.

  “There stands Bill Perk,” the businessman said.

  “Go on and dust him if you can.”

  Fallon Monroe could tell by the way the man spoke

  he didn’t believe it possible he could kill Bill Perk so

  easily.

  “Give me the money,” he said.

  The man reached inside his coat and took out his

  wallet.

  “Half now, half when the job’s done.”

  “I won’t be sticking around after, you can under-

  stand that, can’t you? All now.”

  “How I know you won’t just take off.”

  “I do, tell Bill Perk I stole your money. He’s the

  sheriff, ain’t he?”

  The man smiled, counted out one hundred dollars.

  Fallon Monroe counted it, then folded it and put it

  inside his hat: a sugarloaf of dark gray slightly sweat

  stained.

  Bill Perk was talking to a Mexican in Spanish. Fal-

  lon didn’t know what he was saying and didn’t care.

  He eased up to him from the off side, saw the Mexi-

  can’s eyes take note. Swift as that he brought up the

  Peacemaker, cocking it as he raised it, saying loudly

  enough for everyone to hear: “It’s the last time you

  come around to screw my wife, goddamn you!” Bill

  Perk turned, his long face full of surprise. Too late.

  He had just enough time to see the barrel wink fire—

  maybe—not a split second more. The shot rocked

  him back on his heels and when he fell, his big spurs

  jangled as his legs trembled then fell silent.

  “Son of a bitch ought to learn not to cuckold an-

  other man’s wife,” Fallon shouted to the stunned

  crowd. “I warned him once already. A man’s got a

  right to protect his own, don’t he?” Then he strode

  quickly out into the cool night, got on his horse, and

  rode away.

  Those who knew Bill Perk were not surprised

  someone had cashed in his chips for him, nor were

  any overly saddened to hear the news. In fact, it made

  for good gossip for a time: folks saying as how Bill ate

  a bullet for his carnal sins. They took a certain plea-

  sure in speculating as to who the vengeful man was,

  but even more so as to who the wife was that Bill Perk

  had been screwing. It kept them scratching their

  heads for the better part of a week.

  A hundred dollars for less than a minute’s work

  seemed like found money.

  And so Fallon Monroe set to practicing his new

  profession with deliberate coolness killing half a

  dozen fellows all over west Texas and both sides of

  the border, retreating often enough back to Okla-

  homa to visit Clara and lie low.

  “You come and go without a word,” she said.

  “That’s the way I am,” he said.

  On two of the visits she’d become pregnant, with a

  little more than a year separating the baby girls she

  delivered. Neither time was Fallon there for the birth

  of his daughters. It set Clara’s heart against him.

  “I can’t continue to live like this,” she said.

  “I make a living for us,” he said.

  “You treat me like your whore.”

  “I can’t stand doing nothing, sitting around.”

  “The railroad is hiring,” she said.


  “Railroad? What, laying rails, gandy-dancing, not

  me. That’s back-breaking low work.”

  “You’ve never said what it is you do,” she said.

  “You go away and you come back with money, but

  you’ve never said what or how you earn it.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “If it is something illegal,” she said. “Am I to also

  become a widow, or be wife to a man who ends up in

  prison?”

  These discussions would lead to arguments and he

  would leave again.

  The next time he returned to Oklahoma she saw

  the decline in him. The liquor had finally begun to

  take its toll: he’d lost a great deal of weight and he

  looked older by ten years.

  “No more,” she said. The girls were now six and

  seven years old. “They ask me where their father is

  and I don’t know what to tell them.”

  Things had become too hot for him in Texas. The

  Rangers were after him and so were the Texas State

  Police. He’d shot one in San Antonio and wasn’t sure

  if the man had died or not; it had been a dispute over

  a Mexican woman.

  “Fine,” Fallon said. “I will take us all north of here.

  I hear there is plenty of cheap land in the Dakotas.”

  She wasn’t entirely convinced of his motives, but

  he vowed that he would find work that would keep

  him close to her and the children. They left that very

  night, packing what they could into trunks, leaving

  the rest. She didn’t understand his haste to be gone.

  In Bismarck he seemed to settle down for a time.

  “I like it that you’ve changed,” she said. He

  seemed at peace for once in his life, but what she

  didn’t know was that his visits to the local opium den

  had altered his thinking.

  Then he got into a knife fight with a man and the

  man stabbed him and the wound was nearly fatal. Fal-

  lon wasn’t able to get out of bed for a time and Clara

  had taken work as a schoolteacher. It was through ru-

  mor that she learned Fallon had been seeing a local

  prostitute and that the stabbing had been over this

  woman. She went to find out the truth and soon

  learned it.

  When Fallon was nearly healed she confronted

  him. He didn’t deny it. It was then she decided she

  would leave him.

  And the first time he went to town again and came

  home drunk and she found him snoring in their bed,

  she packed the children and took the stage north to a

  settlement called Sweet Sorrow. Weeks before, she’d

  seen an advertisement in the Bismarck Tribune for a

  schoolteacher and had written a letter of interest and

  received one back offering her the job. Fallon had

  made it easy for her.

  He awoke that night to find her gone along with

  her clothes and his children. He wondered how much

  he cared, went to town and found his prostitute.

  “I am a free man,” he declared to the cyprian.

  “Free of what?” she said.

  They were already through half a bottle of Black

  Mustang.

  “I left Clara.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “Be with you,” he said.

  She laughed.

  “I’m a working gal, Fallon. But I work for me and

  I work for Harry. You can’t stay with me. Harry

  would castrate you, or worse.”

  “I never liked that son of a bitch,” he declared.

  “He wouldn’t like you, either, if he thought you

  wanted me to give it to you free.”

  Fallon was struck by the coldness in her voice.

  “I thought . . .”

  She laughed.

  “Don’t be a fool,” she said. “I got a man and he

  sees I’m taken care of and I don’t need two. Now you

  want a turn, Fallon? I mean do you have the money

  for a turn? If not, I’m going to have to ask you to

  leave.”

  “Toss me out? Like that?”

  She nodded.

  He drew back his fist.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I’d hate to tell Harry you

  roughed me up. Harry doesn’t let any man fool with

  his property. He’d kill you and have the butcher grind

  you up into sausage.”

  He smashed his fist into her face and she went

  down. Then, taking what was left of the bottle, he

  stepped over her and reached for the door.

  “Get out you damn drunkard! I’ll have Harry on

  you! You wait and see!”

  Later he heard the pimp, Harry Turtle, was look-

  ing for him, Harry and some of his gang. And Fallon

  found himself hiding in a dark alley and stayed in it

  till the first gray dawn came again. Somewhere he had

  lost his nerve, or it had been stolen by the whiskey

  and dope. His hands trembled as he rose shakily. He

  stumbled down the alley. The town was quiet. The

  quiet spooked him almost as much as the thought of

  Harry Turtle and his boys catching up to him.

  He knew he must try and find Clara, that she

  would save him. She’d always been there for him—

  until this last time. His anger welled inside him at the

  thought that she wasn’t there now. Because of you my

  life has turned to hell, he thought.

  He went to the stage lines, found the ticket master

  there alone, smoking his pipe, enjoying a cup of cof-

  fee. The man looked up beneath bushy eyebrows, his

  forehead wrinkling, the dome of his bald head a splat-

  ter of brown spots.

  “A woman and two kids buy a ticket here the other

  day, day before that?”

  The ticket master ran it through his mind, said,

  “No.”

  “She had to,” Fallon said in a plaintive voice.

  “Was no other way she could have got out of here!”

  Ticket master said, “Woman come in about two

  weeks ago and purchased three tickets, but not the

  other day. She left the other day on the stage—her

  and two little girls, like you said.”

  “Where to?” Fallon said.

  Ticket master scratched behind his ear.

  “Can’t remember where exactly she was bound

  for.”

  “Give me a list of stops along the way.”

  “You want a ticket?”

  “Far as this damn mud wagon goes,” Fallon said.

  Ticket master said, “It’ll cost you thirty dollars all

  the way.”

  Fallon realized he was flat broke.

  “Just write ’em down for me, the stops, then.”

  Ticket master wrote them down: Bent Fork, Tulip,

  Grand Rock, Sweet Sorrow, Melon, Grass Patch, and

  Hog Back.

  “She turns around in Hog Back,” the ticket master

  said.

  Fallon took the list, went to the door, opened it,

  looked both ways up and down the street. He didn’t

  see Harry Turtle or any of his known associates. But

  he did see a piebald tied up in front of the hotel.

  The son of a bitch looks like it wants to be stolen,

  Fallon told himself.

  15

  Jake and Toussaint arrived at the Swede’s while

  the sun was
still trying to lift its fat white belly out

  of the cold fog. Five fresh graves nearly dug several

  yards from the cabin. Tall John stood leaning on a

  shovel wiping sweat from his face with a silk scarf.

  Will Bird sat on a pile of dirt smoking a shuck, hav-

  ing just said to John, “I never done such hard work,

  not even building windmills in Texas is this hard.”

  Five caskets lay in a row waiting internment.

  “Marshal,” John said as a way of greeting when

  Jake and Toussaint rode up.

  Jake nodded, looked toward the house. Thank-

  fully, a stiff northerly wind dragged away the smell of

  death.

  “You close to finishing up here?” Jake asked.

  “Pert’ near. Soon as we finish up this last grave,

  we’ll put them to rest.”

  Will Bird called to Toussaint from where he sat

  smoking.

  “I don’t reckon you got any liquor with you?”

  Toussaint cut his gaze to the younger man. He

  knew Will Bird only slightly from his itinerant visita-

  tions to Sweet Sorrow, had heard through rumor that

  Will was once the lover of the late prostitute Mistress

  Sheba, killed by Bob Olive. Had heard more recently

  he was courting the young woman who’d started a

  hat shop in town. Toussaint didn’t know why any

  town needed a hat shop for women; such was the

  foolishness of white folks. Such information of course

  meant little to him. It certainly wasn’t enough for

  Toussaint to pass judgment on Will Bird one way or

  the other. The boy was like a lot of other shiftless

  white men he’d come across on the prairies: not all

  bad, not all good.

  Toussaint stood in his stirrups to relieve his back-

  side.

  “No, I’ve got no liquor,” he said.

  Will Bird looked at the last of the shuck held be-

  tween his fingers then took a final draw from it before

  stubbing it out in the dirt. Standing, he took his

  shovel in hand and said, “Mr. John, let’s get this fin-

  ished up. I’d like to get my day’s pay and treat myself

  to a whiskey or two.”

  Jake said to the undertaker, “When you’re finished

  here, I’d appreciate it if you stopped by Karen Sun-

  flower’s place and pick up Otis Dollar and take him

  back into town with you.”

  “Why, whatever is wrong with Otis?”

  Jake explained it, as much as he knew.

  “Why, that Swede is becoming a regular villain of

  the prairies,” Tall John said. “Poor Martha . . .”

  The stiff wind ruffled their clothes.