Skin Medicine

by Tim Curran

  “ Brigham Young,” the miner said. “After one of those, you’ll become a confirmed polygamist.”

  Cabe smiled.

  “ Or maybe a Wild Bill Hickok? Two swallows and you’re a crack shot gunman. You’ll pull iron on anyone.”

  Cabe allowed himself a laugh.

  The bartender shook his head. “Nope. I think our friend here needs a Crazy Horse. You put one back and you’re ready to take on the U.S. Seventh Cavalry.”

  Carny started pouring and mixing and the smell of alcohol in the air was enough to curl the hairs at the back of Cabe’s neck. A glass was set before him. He didn’t even ask what was in it. As he brought it to his lips, he felt the fumes burn up through his nostrils and right into his brain. He put it to his lips and threw it back in one swallow.

  Jesus.

  It landed in his belly like liquid metal, melting ice and setting dry tinder ablaze in the mother of all firestorms. Cabe started coughing and gagging and sputtering and for one divine moment, he saw the face of Jesus…and then fingers of warmth were threading through him, igniting him in places he didn’t know could burn.

  “ Damn,” he said. “Goddamn.”

  A couple miners were laughing. Carny was smiling.

  Cabe found his seat again, ordered another. He rolled himself a cigarette and lit it up. Everything in him was blazing away nicely now and he honestly didn’t have a care in the world. He’d been following a man for near six weeks now, a killer, but right then he would’ve traded shots of whiskey with him. The Crazy Horse was one damn fine drink.

  He sipped carefully on the second. “I don’t think my ass has been burned so thoroughly since the war, gentlemen.”

  Carny nodded, wiped out some glasses. “What side you fight on?”

  “ Confederate,” Cabe said, offering no more. The war was in his mind every day, but he did not speak of it. Not unless he was with another veteran. Some things were better left in the past. “You?”

  Carney shook his head. “Not me. Had me a brother died at Shiloh fighting for the Union, Eighth Illinois.”

  “ Sorry to hear that,” Cabe said and meant it. “I truly am. Lot of good boys died on both sides and the older I get, the more I start to wonder what the hell it was all about.”

  “ Amen,” said the miner.

  Someone coughed, then gagged, then began to mumble something. Down at the end of the bar, a man in a filthy sheepskin coat raised his head. He pulled off what was left of his whiskey, gagged and spit most of it on the floor. He had a shaggy black beard that reached to his chest and eyes like setting suns.

  “ War, you say?” he managed, a tangle of drool hanging from his lips like a dirty ribbon. He wiped it away with one grubby fist. “War betwixt the States. No… War of Northern Aggression. Yes sir. I fought. I sure did. Goddamn blue bellies, goddamned Yankees. Sonsofbitches.”

  The miner winced as he saw the bearded man begin to stagger over. Maybe it was that he knew trouble when he saw it or maybe it was the man’s smell…he stunk like a heap of rancid steer hides.

  Cabe eyed him up, didn’t like what he saw. That long stringy hair, that heavy beard all knotted-up and filthy like he used it to wipe out spittoons. His rheumy eyes were red-rimmed, but beneath that haze of alcohol…just as dusky as open graves. Some drunken, ignorant hellbilly, that’s what.

  Carny stopped wiping the bar. “Sit your ass down, Orv. Just sit it right down. The house’ll buy you another whiskey. Otherwise, you can get the hell out.”

  “ Fuck you,” the hellbilly said, scratching at that rug of beard. He came on with a stink of urine. The stains at his crotch said he’d pissed himself and it wasn’t the first time. “Goddamn war, yes sir. I was in that war. Yessum. Lost two brothers in that goddamn war.” He stared at Cabe, not liking what he saw. “Yankee, ain’t you?”

  Cabe sighed. “No, Confederate. Second Arkansas. Popped my cherry at Wilson’s Creek and lost my soul at Pea Ridge.”

  The hellbilly didn’t seem to hear or want to. “You was on our side? Hell you were. Probably some goddamn guerilla out killing babies and robbing farmers. Probably rode with Bloody Bill and his murdering, raping cowards, didn’t you? Not like me. No sir, not like me. Not a real soldier.”

  The miner tapped a finger to his skull, indicating that the hellbilly was crazier than dancing cats. But Cabe had already deduced as much. Didn’t take a tree full of owls to figure that.

  “ Now, Orv,” Carny said and said very calmly like he was talking to his pet beagle that had just shit on the carpet. “This fellow’s just having himself a drink. He don’t want no trouble. He ain’t a Yankee like me or Bob here. He’s a Southern boy like you and he was a real soldier. So just let him be, hear?”

  The hellbilly hawked up a gob of phlegm and spit it at his feet. “Fuck you know, you sumbitch.”

  Cabe figured old Orv was making a mistake. By the looks of Carny, he could hammer cold steel into tent pegs with those fists of his. And you just didn’t want to think about how many faces he’d disfigured or skulls he’d fractured. You didn’t get on the bad side of a man like that. It was damn dangerous. That’s what Cabe was thinking…until the hellbilly’s sheepskin coat drifted open and he saw that big, mean-looking 1851 Colt Navy. 44 hanging at his side.

  Cabe stopped worrying about old Orv’s face and started wondering how quick the blood would run from a. 44 hole in his own belly. He figured it would run pretty damn fast.

  Licking his lips with a tongue drier than desert canvas, he let the fingers of his right hand casually drift down towards the butt of his Starr double-action. 44 conversion. It was a smaller weapon than Orv’s Colt. He had no doubt he could pull it faster…but, hell, last thing he wanted was any killing. That’s not why he was here.

  The hellbilly was still advancing, but coming on slow like a mad dog deciding where to sink its foamy teeth.

  Cabe said, “Let me buy you a drink, friend. We’ll drink to the old CSA and all the good boys we lost. What say?”

  Orv’s hand slid down to his belt, brushed the butt of the mankiller waiting in the holster…and proceeded to his crotch where it began to do some scratching.

  Cabe relaxed slightly.

  A couple of miners sitting at tables quietly excused themselves, slipping out the door in a blast of wet, black night. Those that remained kept their distance, staying well away. Cabe didn’t like any of that. Way he was figuring things, if people were getting out, then this wasn’t just some crazy drunk. He was a crazy drunk that liked to kill.

  Carny made a move for something behind the bar and the hellbilly, maybe not quite as drunk as he looked, pivoted and brought out his Colt smooth and easy.

  But Cabe was already on his feet, Starr in hand.

  There was a moment of pained, tormented silence, the tension so thick you could’ve speared it with a stick.

  The hellbilly was laughing, but there were tears in his eyes. “Got yerself a Starr, boy? I seen ‘em in the war. Cap and ball pistol, ain’t it?”

  “ Converted,” Cabe heard himself say, struck by the absurdity of two men about to kill each other discussing weapons. “Had it converted to metal cartridge. Easier that way.”

  The hellbilly laughed, giggled really. Saliva ran from the corners of his trembling lips. “I like my 1851, yes sir. Cap and ball, roll yer own, eh? I killed me a score of Yankees with it at Fort Donelson, didn’t I? Bluebellies begged fer their lives and I scattered their brains, didn’t I?” He cackled madly now, that gun just shaking in his fist, hungry for flesh. “Tenth Tennessee, yes sir. Bloody Tenth, they called us. Know why? Because we killed so many and took so many casualties. Blood…hee, hee…all that blood. Just a-running everywhere. You couldn’t get away from all that blood, could you? Still can’t get it off m’hands. Yankees captured us, that it? M’brothers were all dead, all dead, you say? Yes sir, I believe they was. They sent me to Camp Douglas, the POW camp up near Chee-cago. Oh m’Lord, but them Yankees had fun with us! At night they’d shoot through the barracks walls,
make bets on how many Johnny Rebs they could kill with a single ball? Hee, you remember that?”

  Cabe cleared his throat of dust. “I was captured, too, Orv. After Pea Ridge. I was at Douglas. Later they exchanged us…we mustered back in, went to the fighting again-“

  “ Liar! Liar! Liar! Goddamn bluebelly liar!” the hellbilly stammered, drool flying from his mouth, his brown and yellow teeth snapping open and shut like a beartrap. “Yer a Yankee! I can smell yer stink! Dirty murdering bastards killing Roy and Jesse! Fucking bluebellies! I kill ‘em on sight, I kill ‘em on sight!”

  He brought the gun up.

  Cabe began to apply pressure to the trigger of the Starr.

  “ If you kill ‘em on sight,” Carny said. “Then you better ready yourself, because here comes one now.”

  The door had swung open and a tall man had stepped in.

  He wore a knee-length overcoat, the cuffs and collar trimmed in fur. Atop his head was a round buffalo fur cap. His face was narrow, angular, the mustache riding beneath the sharp nose trimmed immaculately. He was a handsome man and his pale blue eyes simmered with authority and bearing. There was a badge pinned to his breast. It read: SHERIFF BEAVER COUNTY UTAH.

  The hellbilly was staring at him, but so was Cabe.

  Cabe was speechless. Something hot and wet had spilled inside of him and it made him shake, made him angry, made him boil inside. But he said nothing, not yet.

  “ Orv,” the sheriff said in a flat tone. “Give me your gun. You don’t and I swear to God I’ll kill you where you stand.”

  The sheriff hadn’t even opened his coat to show his guns…if he even had any. But those eyes…Cabe remembered those eyes…they were merciless. And when they looked at you and into you, your insides melted like butter on a stove lid.

  The hellbilly looked to Cabe almost desperately. His head shook slightly from side to side.

  The sheriff walked over. “The gun,” he said. “Right now.”

  Old Orv looked fit to shit himself, except by the stink, he probably already had. His fingers tightened on that big life-eating 1851 Colt. His knuckles were strained white as pearl buttons. He looked from Cabe to Carny, cast a glance at the miners. He looked oddly helpless.

  The sheriff unbuttoned his coat, made damn sure the hellbilly saw how slowly and calmly he did it. And made sure he got a good look at the butt of the short-barreled. 45 Peacemaker waiting in the hip scabbard.

  He held his left hand out. “The gun,” he said and those words were sharp enough to cut steel.

  Old Orv made to hand the gun over…then maybe the tension of the moment or just plain machismo got to him, because he started to bring it back, his eyes gone ebon and savage. But the sheriff was too quick, too sure. He took hold of the hellbilly’s wrist with his right hand, gave it a nasty twist, and that big revolver dropped into his left. He took it by the barrel and, with no more thought than swatting a fly, smashed old Orv across the face five, six times with the butt until he sank to his knees. Orv clasped his bleeding face with those soiled fingers, moaning and gobbling.

  A big man wearing a tin star on his Fish slicker came through the door, looked at the ‘billy, then at the sheriff.

  “ Lock this trash up,” the sheriff said. Then he turned to Cabe. “Sir, if you would please, leather that pistol.”

  Cabe found himself doing so without even thinking. That voice, those eyes…they were almost hypnotic somehow. But then he came to himself as the deputy hauled the hellbilly non-too gently out the door. That cocky, crooked grin opened up in his face. “Well, well, well, Jackson Dirker,” he said. “As I live and breathe.”

  The sheriff raised an eyebrow, showed no sign of recognition. “Do I know you, sir?”

  Cabe smiled and that smile burned with hate. “You should.” He touched the old scars running from one cheek, across the bridge of his nose, and to the next cheek. “These marks I bear…”

  “ What about them?”

  “ You gave ‘em to me,” Cabe said.

  2

  The Beaver County Sheriff’s Office.

  A dirty single-story brick edifice stuck in-between the county courthouse and a mine broker’s office, looking straight out at the town square and the taverns lined-up beyond like prostitutes offering an easy time.

  Cabe stood outside in the blowing, wet wind, his boots caked with mud like wet cement.

  He wasn’t sure what he was feeling just then, but it wasn’t good. Part of him wanted to kick though the door and gun down that arrogant sonofabitch of a county sheriff. But that wouldn’t do and he knew it. That was not how things were done in real life. He had thought of Jackson Dirker for years, playing out revenge fantasies in his mind for the time when they met up again-if ever-and now it all fell to his feet. Like the shed skin of a snake, these fantasies were simply dead.

  He came through the door and saw the big deputy sipping from a tin cup of coffee. He was a large man, heavy in the middle, but broad in the shoulders and powerful-looking. He wore no gun. He hadn’t at the saloon either. Cabe figured he was like old “Bear River” Tom Smith down in Abilene years back, enforcing law and order with his bare fists.

  “ What can I do for you?” he asked. “I’m Henry Wilcox, deputy.”

  “ Tyler Cabe. I have business with Sheriff Dirker. He about?”

  “ In the back,” Wilcox said. “I’ll get him.”

  Cabe found a straight-backed chair and pulled it up to what he assumed was Dirker’s desk-a big oaken antique outfit, papers and the like organized very neatly. Yeah, that would be Dirker. Officious, stern, militaristic.

  Sure as shit.

  Cabe had been in lawmen’s offices in dozens and dozens of towns, if not hundreds. Some were nothing more than tumbledown shacks with shackles bolted to concrete blocks to hold prisoners. Planks set over barrels for desks. But not here. Not in a rich mining county. The job of county sheriff would be a very lucrative one.

  You could expect nothing less of Jackson Dirker.

  Cabe waited there, lighting a cigarette and studying the wanted dodgers on the walls, town ordinances, a rack of repeating rifles chained into a hardwood case.

  The door to the back-the holding cells, Cabe figured-opened and Dirker stepped out and Cabe felt butterflies take wing in his belly. Dirker wore a striped suit with a gold watch chain and a string tie. The sort of duds a banker might wear. But Dirker had impressive bearing and he would’ve looked like the man in charge had he worn a corset and dress.

  He sat down across from Cabe. “You have business here, Cabe?”

  Cabe felt his voice catch in his throat, snag there like denim on a nail head. For a moment he wondered if maybe he had the wrong man here…but no, there was only one Jackson Dirker. Cabe had known it was him the moment he’d come into the Oasis. The face was older, lined impeccably by experience. There was a touch of gray at the temples. But those eyes, you couldn’t forget them. Twenty years had not tempered their ferocity. They could still burn holes in cinderblock.

  “ You remember me, Dirker?”

  The sheriff nodded. “I do.”

  “ Didn’t seem like you did back at the saloon…”

  “ It took a moment.”

  “ The scars refreshed your memory?”

  Dirker arched an eyebrow. “Scars are hardly a novelty in this country, Cabe. Now what is it you want?” he said. “What’re you doing here?”

  “ I came to see the ocean, feel the spray.”

  “ The ocean is hundreds of miles from here.”

  Cabe slapped his hat against his knee. “Damn…I must’ve taken a wrong turn.”

  Dirker was not amused. “Is this business or personal?”

  Now there was a question. Good old Crazy Jack Dirker. You just couldn’t rattle the man. He could talk about dismembering a baby same way he talked about trimming his toenails. That chiseled face was incapable of emotion. It knew not hate or anger, love nor happiness. Only the eyes were alive in that mask. Course, last time Cabe had seen him, he was wear
ing the dark blue sack coat and Jeff Davis hat of a Union Army lieutenant.

  Cabe drew off his cigarette. “I tell you, Crazy Jack…folks still call you that?”

  “ They do not. During the war, only Johnny Rebs referred to me as that, I understand.” He said this indifferently. Names meant nothing to him. You could call his mother a whore and if he didn’t want to kill you, you couldn’t make him do it. But if he was in the mood, look out.

  “ I can’t tell you how long I’ve thought about you, what I’d do to you when I finally caught up with you.”

  “ The war’s over,” Dirker said. “Act like a man and move on. That’s what has to be done. The South underestimated the will and strength of the North. Such assumptions lose wars. Everyone did what they felt they had to do. Now it’s over. We’re united and have been for many years. We have to look to the future and learn from the past.”

  Cabe’s teeth were clenched. “Sure enough, sure enough. I’d like to forget the whole sorry mess…but every time I look in damn mirror, Dirker, I remember. These scars don’t let me forget.” Cabe let himself simmer down. Dirker was in control, like always. He would not let the man win this discussion, make him into some hot-headed fool Southerner. Not this time. “We lost, Dirker. When you lose, it ain’t so easy to forgive and forget. You think of how it could have been different. It’s tough on a man.”

  Dirker arched that eyebrow again. “Sometimes it’s tough on the victor as well. You think of what was done and how you could have treated your foes more civil, excused them for their transgressions.”

  Goddammit. The sonofabitch was acting like a poet and preacher and statesman now. Trying to make Cabe think he actually had some sort of heart beating in that empty chest of his. But Cabe did not believe it. “Pea Ridge. You remember it? I do. We got our asses cut to threads there. You bluebellies scattered us to the four winds. Me and my boys…we weren’t even sure where we were. No shoes. No food. No ammunition. You rounded us up, Dirker. That bastard sergeant of yours shot down Little Willy Gibson! Then you took that whip of yours to the rest of us. When I begged you…begged you to stop, you did this to my face. I was down and you were still whipping me…”