by Jordan Krall
They dragged Calamaro and Sartana the donkey behind the buildings, parallel to Main Street. When they reached the doctor’s place, Lyons told Nix to wait while he went inside. A few minutes later, Lyons was pulling a small wagon behind him with Ryan Hickory lying in it. His legs had been blown off and the doctor did his best to bandage the stubs right above the knees. Chaps walked out behind them, limping but grinning ear to ear.
Chaps said, “Wow. That was quite an experience.”
“Shut the fuck up, you piece of shit,” Nix said.
“Doctor West sure works miracles. What the hell were those things the doc put on you, Ryan?” Chaps said.
“I don’t know. Looked like leeches to me but bigger,” Ryan said.
Chaps said, “They changed colors, too. You see that? And they smelt like honey and burning meat. I almost ate one of them.”
William Lyons turned around. “Both of you. Shut the fuck up.” Then he turned to Nix. “You come to me asking for help and I tell you I’ll do something about it and just to wait for me and what the hell do you do? You go ahead and start more trouble. And then what happens?” He pointed at Ryan. “This asshole’s legs get blown off.”
Nix started gesturing with his hand, getting more aggressive than he usually would get when talking to Lyons. “We were just going to watch for him, maybe fool with him a little bit but I got anxious, know what I’m saying? You can’t fault a man for that.”
“You really are a stupid son of a bitch, Nix. But now you can redeem yourself. You’re going to drag this cocksucker into the desert, the spot they call Cuchillo’s Point. You know where it is?”
“Yeah. What do we do with that wooden thing?”
“I already told you. Bring it along.” William Lyons dropped the handle to Ryan’s wagon and looked at Chaps. “You can pull this asshole.”
William led them out of town towards Cuchillo’s Point. He never could figure out why it was called that considering it wasn’t a point at all but rather a rocky area with a few shriveled trees right in the middle of the desert. He had used it plenty of times for this sort of thing and sometimes thought he should rename it. He could call it Lyons Mouth and so everyone would know that William Lyons had named it and that it was his in a way. He’d like that.
After they walked the mile and a half to Cuchillo’s Point, Lyons said, “Stop here.” He walked over to a rock and pulled out a small shovel. He threw it over to Nix. “Start shoveling.”
Nix made a disgruntled face but when he saw William’s eyes, he quickly got to digging. He dug a narrow hole five feet deep, just enough room for Calamaro’s body. Lyons dumped Calamaro in there feet-first. Then he had Nix put the sand back so that only Calamaro’s head was visible above the ground.
William Lyons took out a small razor from his pocket. He crouched down and then slid the blade across Calamaro’s cheek several times.
“Wake up, asshole,” he said.
Calamaro’s eyelids started to flutter and then opened slowly.
Nix laughed. “Yeah, wake up!” He kicked sand into Calamaro’s face. It was enjoyable seeing the guy buried up to his neck, helpless and bleeding from razor cuts. It was almost worth it getting that shot glass thrown into his eye.
Ryan banged on the side of the wagon. “Pick me up! Pick me up!” Chaps lifted him up and brought him closer to Calamaro. Ryan threw a few punches and even tried to throw a few kicks but then realized that he had no legs and so all that effort was useless. He pulled down his pants in the front and started to piss on Calamaro’s head.
“Look! That woke him up!” Nix said, kicking more sand so that it mixed in with the urine.
Calamaro didn’t say a word. There was no screaming, no cussing, no begging. He simply stared up at the men who surrounded him.
William Lyons put his face an inch away from Calamaro’s. “You don’t have anything to say? You don’t want to ask us why we’re doing this, why you’re buried up to your neck in the desert? You’re not at all wondering about that?”
The only response was a slight shaking of the head.
“It always surprises me when assholes mistake stupidity for bravery,” Lyons said, putting his razor up to Calamaro’s cheek again. With his other hand he grabbed some flesh and started cutting it off with the razor. He looked surprised when the man didn’t scream out in pain. Calamaro simply stared at him.
The other men just hooted and hollered at the sight of William Lyons carving a piece of flesh off the guy’s cheek. They found it funny that this stranger wandered into town thinking he was tough and now finding out that he was nothing but a head growing out the ground, a head that was going to be carved up like a slab of beef.
After he had a few slivers of flesh in his hand, Lyons said, “Open your mouth.” He put the pieces up to Calamaro’s lips but the mouth did not open.
“Open it!” Nix kicked the back of Calamaro’s head. That did the trick. The mouth opened and Lyons stuck the flesh in there. “Eat it,” Lyons said. “Eat your skin.”
The men watched as Calamaro slowly chewed his own cheek-flesh and then swallowed it. They cheered. Chaps clapped so loud that the sound seemed to echo for miles.
“How’s it feel to eat your own flesh? Do you want to vomit? Go head and vomit if you want to. We’ll just scoop it up and make you eat that, too. Maybe we should wait until you shit your pants and then dig you up, make you eat your own shit.” Lyons said, sticking his fingers into Calamaro’s mouth. “You like me sticking my fingers in there? You want to pretend my fingers are a big cock? You want to suck on them? Come on, suck, then. Suck!”
Calamaro wouldn’t comply so Lyons just stuck his fingers down his throat and pulled them out violently. Then he took a flask out of his jacket pocket. It was small and silver with the inscription To William, from your brother, Jack.
“I guess you must need something to wash that down with, huh?” he said, unscrewing the top of the flask and holding it close to Calamaro’s lips. “Open up and drink. Drink, bastard, drink!”
Calamaro opened his mouth and let Lyons pour the liquid down his throat. He swallowed as much as was poured and then closed his eyes. Lyons slapped him in the mouth. “Open your fucking eyes, asshole. You’ll be dreaming soon enough.” He laughed and then the other men started to laugh.
Chaps said, “What was in that flask?”
“Just something to help the man dream. Every man deserves some dreams before death,” Lyons said, standing up and putting the flask back into his pocket. “I don’t want him closing his eyes, though. Go get some cactus needles and make sure he can’t close them.”
Chaps said, “Why don’t we just shoot him?”
“Because that’s not fun, jack-ass. That’s too easy,” Lyons said. “Now get going with making sure this asshole can’t close his eyes.” He pointed to a lone cactus a dozen feet away. The other men walked over and got to work while he leaned against a rock. He couldn’t wait until he got back home and was able get back to playing with his sons. Life was good.
Lyons smiled while the men stuck needles into Calamaro’s eyelids, making sure to stick them into the flesh right above the eyes so that he’d be unable to close them. Nix, especially, was finding pleasure in the task. He made sure to stick the needles in deep and felt his erection get harder every time he did so.
Finally the job was done and they all stood around Calamaro.
William Lyons bent down and grabbed a handful of hair. “I can’t promise you what you’re going to see but I can promise you that you’re not going to enjoy it.”
Nix walked over to the wooden donkey and kicked it. “What’re we going to do with this?”
Lyons shrugged.
“I think it’d be nice if we hung it from a tree, know what I’m saying?” Nix grabbed the leather reins and started pulling it to one of the barren trees. Chaps helped him hoist it up so it would hang off one of the branches. After it was hung, William Lyons took the shovel and swung it at the donkey, creating a huge crack in the side of
it. He dug his hand inside and pulled something out.
Chaps said, “What the hell is that?”
“It looks like a shoe,” Nix said, walking closer to Lyons.
“It’s a woman’s shoe.” William Lyons held it up. “Why the hell would he be carrying this around?”
“Stick it in his mouth, stick it in his mouth,” Ryan said. He cackled uncontrollably, watching in pleasure as Lyons did as he suggested. The heel of the shoe went right into Calamaro’s mouth.
William Lyons said, “Suck on this.” Then he turned to Chaps. “You have your whip with you?”
“Course I do,” Chaps said. He pulled out his bullwhip and cracked it. “You want me to rough him up a bit?”
“Yeah, just a little,” Lyons said. He smiled. “Give him a haircut and a shave.”
Chaps laughed. With a few cracks of his whip, he tore off patches of Calamaro’s hair which made both Ryan and Nix guffaw. “You got him good,” Ryan said. “He looks like shredded beef!”
Then Chaps moved to the side and took off slices of flesh from underneath Calamaro’s chin. The sand became soaked with blood.
“Seeing you with that whip reminds me why I keep you around,” Lyons said.
Chaps laughed.
Lyons looked around. “Hey. Where’s his gun?”
Ryan said, “Who’s?”
“What do you mean, who’s? Who the hell you think? Didn’t one of you assholes think to take his gun out of his holster before we buried him?”
The three other men looked at each other but said nothing.
“Fucking idiots,” Lyons said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He started walking away and Nix followed close behind. Chaps cracked his whip once more, this time an inch away from Calamaro’s eyes. Then he put his whip away and started pulling Ryan’s wagon.
“Don’t be so rough!” Ryan said.
Chaps smiled widely, showing his huge yellow teeth.
* * *
Calamaro tried closing his eyes but couldn’t. He attempted to spit the shoe out of his mouth but that proved to be impossible, too. The high heel was practically down his throat. From the taste and texture of it, he knew which shoe it was.
It was the one he had gotten off that woman in Philadelphia. She had not wanted to give him the shoe at first but after he used his charm as well as some money, the woman agreed. It was a nice shoe, Calamaro thought. It still had her sweat stains on it. He thought that if he wasn’t buried up to his neck with cactus needles stuck in his eyelids, he would’ve enjoyed having the shoe stuck in his mouth.
What worried him was that he had swallowed whatever it was that Lyons had forced down his throat. It tasted sweet and gritty like fruit juice. Calamaro knew that it wasn’t an ordinary drink. His head tingled and he began seeing things, hearing things, and feeling things tickling his scalp.
There were millions of scorpions gathered in front of him, organized in lines like soldiers. It reminded him of the war and how all those boys lined up with their weapons thinking it was some sort of game that they’d walk away from. Hadn’t they known that there was a better chance that they’d be killed where they stood? No, they didn’t even stop to think about that. That’s why he chose not to get involved. There was no honor or dignity in dying a soldier’s death.
The scorpions flexed their tails, their stingers looking wet and sharp. He saw one huge scorpion in the crowd that had two tails. He thought that was strange. Whoever heard of a scorpion with two tails? Calamaro tried walking towards it but then remembered that his body was under the ground. There was no way he could move.
Then the scorpion with two tails cracked open like an egg and a tiny woman crawled out.
The woman was carrying an umbrella that rapidly changed colors. Calamaro wondered why the woman was carrying it since it wasn’t even raining. Then he remembered that sometimes women carried umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. But didn’t some women carry an umbrella so they could twirl it around and catch the eyes of men?
The tiny woman stared at Calamaro and then started stabbing each and every scorpion with the sharp point of her umbrella. It was a slaughter. None of the scorpions fought back as if they were willing to die at the hand of that tiny woman who was birthed from the body of one of their brethren. Calamaro felt a tinge of sorrow for the things but knew that it was simply nature taking its course.
When the tiny woman was finished killing all of the scorpions, she stood in front of Calamaro and spoke. Her voice was high pitched like the squeaking of a wheel.
“I’ve never seen so many men wasted so badly,” she said.
Calamaro tried to speak but the shoe prevented it.
The tiny girl spoke again. “If you save your breath I feel a man like you can manage it. And if you don’t manage it, you’ll die. Only slowly, very slowly, old friend.”
Night came quickly and disappeared just as fast. Calamaro wasn’t sure if it was the real moon or just imaginary but he watched it nonetheless. He watched as the moon became a green orb of flesh with the tiny girl sitting on top of it. Then a face appeared in the moon, the sullen face of a dying man. Its mouth opened and instead of teeth, it was filled with fiery hair. Calamaro moaned and felt as if he was about to meet his maker. Maybe God was just a giant mouth full of flaming hair underneath dying eyes and flaring nostrils. Maybe God was the one who trapped Calamaro like a living corpse in the desert as some way of praising the Holy Trinity. He remembered the preaching he had heard growing up, with all of the Amens and the Hallelujahs. All of those words floated through his mind like poisoned water.
The tiny girl on top of the moon stood up and spoke. “Hallelujah,” she said. “Maybe they should call you Hallelujah.”
Then she dissolved into a cloud of shimmering dust and Calamaro fell into a painful waking sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rebecca was happy when she finally slipped into bed for the night. She had the feeling that Betty liked her and that black man Stacklee didn’t seem so bad after all. As those thoughts were on her mind, she drifted off to sleep.
A noise woke her in the middle of the night.
Her eyes opened and her body froze. It was probably just one of the other girls coming up from the bar. Then the sound came again, a light knock on the door.
Rebecca said, “Who is it?” There was no answer. Was it just some drunken son of a bitch looking for a screw?
“Who is it?”
Someone whispered through the door. Rebecca could not make out what was being said so she got out of bed and tip-toed to the door. “Hello?”
The whispering got louder. There was babbling that Rebecca couldn’t decipher and then the voice said, “Whore!”
Rebecca was startled by the anger in the whispering and she still couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Go away or I’m getting Stacklee.” she said. “Do you hear me? Go!”
“Not until you die,” the voice said. “Whore!” There was a hard bang on the door.
Rebecca jumped back and ran to her bed. The door was locked and there was no way that someone could do anything further without Stacklee or one of the other girls hearing. It was probably just some drunk. It had to be.
“Go away!” she said, expecting another angry whisper in response but there was nothing. Faint footsteps ran away from her door.
It took a while but Rebecca fell back asleep. She did so with the realization that she would probably have to get used to being harassed. Men were alike all over whether they were so-called holy men who wanted to rape young girls or the filthy cowhands who frequented the brothel. Maybe tomorrow she’d ask Stacklee for a pistol or at least a knife. After all, a lady needed some sort of protection. It was a dangerous world.
* * *
After Mayor Douglas ejaculated on Ana’s breasts, he looked at her face and felt like slapping the shit out of it. Stupid Mexican bitch was nothing more than a whore even though she fancied herself a dignified woman. Hell, she even considered herse
lf an American woman. What a joke that was.
“I’m done,” he said, wiping his penis on her dress. He looked down at himself. The red tattoos had spread from his penis to his bulbous belly. What the hell was happening to him? He buttoned his pants and walked back to his desk. “You can go now. I’m going to have a drink. In about twenty minutes, send in Belladonna.”
Ana stared at him.
The mayor said, “You listening? That little cunt Belladonna Cardinale. Send her in.”
“She’s dead.”
Mayor Douglas slapped his palm down on his desk. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Ana pulled up her dress and said, “After I took her away, she passed out. Never woke up.”
“The hell she did. I wasn’t that rough on her.”
“Well, she’s dead.”
“And what did you do with the body?”
“I threw it in the crow-pit like you tell me to do with all the girls.”
Mayor Douglas scratched his double chin. “Shit. I really wanted another go at her. Okay, then. Well, bring me some another girl. Tell my boys to go to Keoma and grab me one there. This time, tell them to get me a Chinese girl. I want something tight.”
Ana ran her hands through her dark hair. “Whatever you say.” She left the room, cursing the mayor under her breath. It sickened Ana to feel his scum drying on her breasts but she was intent on enduring it until she got what she wanted. Ana wanted money. She wanted power. She wanted to see Mayor Douglas choke to death on his own raggedy balls. She wanted his gold.
After Ana left the room, Mayor Douglas leaned back on his chair and puffed on a cigar. He was just about done with that Mexican bitch. As he sat there thinking about why he even took up with her in the first place, he heard footsteps outside the door. What the hell did the bitch want now? Didn’t he tell her to leave? But then he heard Ana’s voice coming from outside so it couldn’t have been her. He looked out the window and saw her in the moonlight, hitting one of his men with a cat o’ nine tails.
Then who was outside his door?