Ghost Town: A Novel, Page 3

  First, however, they must marry, something he mistakenly supposed they had already done, and in preparation for this event a special purgative ceremony is required, known as the dance of the errant bridegroom. The medicine man cuts holes in his breast on either side of his two nipples and skewers the holes with wooden pegs attached to rawhide ropes, and he’s made to dance at the end of the ropes until the pegs pop out. When they don’t, they hang him by the ropes to the central pole of the medicine lodge, his ankles and privy member weighted down with buffalo skulls (a form of mercy, his brothers assure him, with commiserating nods and unsmiling winks), until they do, while the older warriors prod him rhythmically with spears and arrows to the beat of a tomtom and carve religious symbols in his buttocks. Fortunately, after the first peg rips out, he’s told, the second follows quickly, but meanwhile the pain is such he is only conscious part of the time, drifting in and out of nightmares about the corruptions of civilization and the horrors of the cosmos as depicted by the animal kingdom and visions of the future as foretold by his bride-to-be: yes, he will leave her; the terrible pain engulfing his heart tells him so. Perhaps he will say his sad goodbyes while lying beside her in the beech woods, in which the squirrels skip, the wild deer browse, and the wistful redbird sings. Or while enjoying her from behind while she is bent over at the riverbank, laundering her father’s ceremonial shirts and breechcloth, riding her horse-fashion and pulling on her braids like reins. Or perhaps he will wait until they can share one last delectable bath together. She has predicted his eventual farewell, it can come as no surprise, and yet her beautiful face seems to darken and flatten out with the shock when he tells her, her eyes to narrow, her cheekbones to rise in rage, her lips to thicken with an unspeakable fury. The next thing he knows, her powerful hands are at his throat and he is far under water, fighting for his life. He flails about desperately but cannot seem to find the rest of her, just her sharp-nailed hands closing around his windpipe and pressing him deeper and deeper—No! Stop! (glub!) I’ll (blub!) stay! I’ll—

  He takes a deep breath and, in the oak-framed mirror, examines his new duds: a fringed and beaded buckskin shirt with matching leggings, soft and bleached a golden hue, glossy new boots with silver spurs, the boots embossed with shootout, stampede, and campfire scenes, a white tengallon hat with silky white neckerchief, and hand-tooled gunbelt. He fills out these things in ways unfamiliar to him, as though he might have swelled up in the long soak. He’s clean-shaven, barbered, and his nails have been trimmed. Pulling on a pair of snow-white kid gloves, thin as new skin, he counts his fingers: all there. His old rags are gone, nothing left of them but for his rumpled wide-brimmed hat, afloat on the soap scum in the wooden tub, and the braided scalp knotted to his new gunbelt. Whereon are also strapped a pair of engraved, silver-plated, ivory-handled Peacemakers and, in its own rawhide sheath, his old bowie knife, wiped clean and polished up so bright he can see himself in its blade, the staghorn handle newly silver-studded as though to marker its most recent history. He fingers all these things speculatively, and also the new Winchester leaning there with its hand-carved mahogany stock and engraved brass fittings, meditating the while upon his old felt hat, once dun-colored, now darker with the water it’s sucked up, riding gloomily on the cold gray surface of the bathwater like a derelict river raft. Or the bloated back of something long demised.

  Hlo, cowboy. It’s the barroom chanteuse with the orange curls and the ruby in her cheek, propped up in the bed in a silky black nightgown with slots in it for putting her powdered ruby-tipped breasts on view. He takes in the sight, then turns away, picks up the long-barreled rifle to check its heft and balance. Good range and easy to draw a bead with but less lethal maybe up close, and up close is mostly what killing he’s had to do out here on the desert. Might have to hack off a few inches. C’mon over here, darlin, and solace a poor widder woman with a sorely achin heart and a lonesome pussy sufferin from a sudden and dreadful deprivement.

  Sorry, mam. I aint the condolin sort.

  Well fetch yerself over and set yer dick t’dancin in the damn thing then, it aint overparticular about yer intentions.

  Some other time mebbe.

  Dont be so crool, kid. Caint yu see how I’m hurtin? Whut’s eatin yu anyhow?

  I dunno. He sighs, looks up. Her pale breasts have sagged somewhat, losing their perkiness, the nipples pointed bellyward now in a downcast humor. I thought I’d drowned.

  She notices him staring and cups her breasts with both hands to aim them up at his face again. C’mere, honey, she says. C’mere’n nuzzle these a spell’n tell me all about it.

  Aint nuthin t’tell. I wuz underwater. And then I wuznt.

  Well well I declare, as proper folks’d say. But git over here closer. All this bereavin has stobbed my ears up so, I caint rightly hear yu away over thar.

  It dont matter. He turns to study himself in the mirror, considering why it is he’s been fitted out like this. He feels exceedingly powerful and yet powerfully vulnerable at the same time. Strange country. All this empty space, a body can see for miles. Yet it’s impossible to shake the feeling that, whichever way he turns, he’s got somebody or something just behind him.

  We all know yu’re purtier’n a pitcher, sweetiepie, but taint right keepin it all to yerself. C’mon. Give this good ole girl a little cuddle. Thet aint too much to ask, is it?

  Sorry, mam. They’s sumthin I gotta do. Caint even guess whut it is, but it’s like sumthin’s goin on twixt me’n them men down thar, and taint over yet.

  Them men! They aint nuthin! Yu seen how they treat a lady!

  Yup. Well. He opens the door, steps out on the landing, his rifle cocked. His new boots crunch grit underfoot. He bats away the cobwebs: a general murmurous gloom all about. Down below in the dark empty saloon, the furniture lies flung about in a tipped and broken scatter, decorated with playing cards, old empty bottles, poker chips, the odd ruined hat or broken-heeled boot, evidence of a livelier time past. Long past: dust on everything like a crusty shroud. Next to the busted wheel of fortune, the grand piano has fallen to its knees, grinning up at him its yellowed rictus grin, mirroring one he feels spreading in alarm across his own jaws: he backs into the room he has just left and shoves the door shut.

  Well, says the voice from the bed, whut a unespected supprise. Always happy t’have visitors.

  Aint nobody out thar, he says.

  Must be they aint ready fer yu yet, she says, patting the black satin pillows beside her. There’s a bottle and two glasses on the bedside table, and she’s lit up a sweet-smelling smoke. Looks like yu got time t’kill, cowboy.

  Yeah. Well. Whut other kind is they?

  She smiles at that and her breasts pop to life again. Thet’s a sight better. Now c’mere, handsome, and lemme instruct yu how them fancy britches come off.

  This time the men are waiting for him when he comes out of the room, still retying his leggings. Before he can draw on them, they grab him and slap him up against the wall and he figures he’s a dead man. But they heave him roughly onto their shoulders and parade him down the wooden stairs to the packed-out saloon, bellowing out “Weaned and Ropebroke,” the hunchbacked piano player in his white shirt and yellow suspenders pounding away at the presumptive tune while the others stomp on the wooden floor and clap and bang bottles on the tables to the rhythm.

  They set him down on top of a round cardtable in the middle of the room and crowd around, denying him any route to the floor or door. He could shoot his way out of here, he supposes, but it might get ugly and anyway where would he go except back out on that godforsaken desert, so for the moment he straightens up to his full height and gazes impassively down at them, hands on his hips, awaiting whatever’s to come.

  Yo, throw a gander at them duds, boys!

  Whoo-eee! It’s like he’s lit up from his innards out!

  Strikes me blind jest t’peer in his dee-rection!

  There’s a peculiar odor in the air, not one he’s brought with him. It takes
him a moment to recognize it as fresh roasted meat. His nose soaks in the rarity as the desert might a sudden shower. The men below him, he sees now, are waving gnawed bones about in the flickering lamplight, drumming on tables with them, shouting and laughing through mouthfuls of half-chewed flesh, washing it all down with tumblers of whiskey. Which seem to be on the house. Over their hairy and hatted heads, through the swinging doors, it’s nighttime outside. He’s not sure where the day has got to.

  Here’s to yu, champ! hollers a squint-eyed graybeard in a topless straw boater, raising his glass, then downing its contents in a single swig. He concludes his toast with a full-throated belch that the others, encircling him, resoundingly echo. They bang their empty tumblers on the tables and more whiskey is passed around, fueling the mounting agitation.

  Whoo! Dont he stink nice!

  Like hot pussy on the hoof!

  Jest lookit them silver six-shooters, willya!

  And them pitcherbook boots!

  Thet blade with alla studs in!

  Thet signifies!

  Thet buckaroo’s been thar, man!

  Should oughter nail a few studs on thet dick a his, too!

  After whut it’s been through up thar, it might be hard t’find!

  Haw! It might be hard t’find but yu shore wont find it hard!

  They roar with sour laughter and whistle and hoot and toss down the whiskey, pour more. Just what’s so funny is not clear to him, but whatever it is he knows he’s at the center of it. He would like to unpedestal himself out of their regard, but there is no gap in the bodies crowded round. He feels like a bottle set on a rock to be shot at. The spidery-fingered humpback bent over the piano has switched to “I Never Done It,” a song about a gunslinger who convinces the judge that it was his gun that did the killing, not him, so the judge lets the gunman go and hangs the pistol, and all the others now join in on the chorus, snorting and whoopeeing and throwing steak bones into the air.

  I never done done DONE it!

  He’d be willing to take seconds on any of those throwaways but he can’t say so, and none pass close enough for him to grab. But then, unexpectedly, the hunchback imitates a drumroll and tinny fanfare on his piano, an aisle opens up in the saloon mob, and a sleepy-looking halfbreed in banker’s pants, red undershirt, and stovepipe hat comes down it, as though emerging from the turning wheel of fortune, ceremoniously porting a clay platter heaped up with some kind of vittles.

  Here they come, boy! says a tall bald man with handlebars and a hideous scar across his face. We been keepin the sweetest grub by fer last!

  The cream a the crop!

  We saved em fer yu!

  We reckon yu earned em!

  Yu need t’recoup yer load back, kid!

  On the clay platter lie a pair of large uncooked testicles, still bloody and pulsing like a hairy heart. It occurs to him then that what they are all feasting on is most likely his mustang. No thanks, he says. I done et.

  He knows right well this faint dodge will avail him nothing, and it does not. I’m afeerd them raw prairie oysters is all yer’n, high roller, the old gent with the squinny informs him flatly, unloosing a gob that rings an unseen spittoon, and the others, closing up the gap again, chorus him with chilling insistence. Pistols have been drawn throughout the saloon.

  Reluctantly, he takes up the platter being forced upon him. The grinning men cram around the table to witness this refection, licking the greasy fingers of their free hands, sucking bottles dry.

  Keerful, boy! Dont grease up them new buckskins!

  Aint they purty! Soft as sateen!

  Soft as the schoolmarm’s crupper! Aint thet right, kid? When he doesn’t answer, they ask him again: Aint thet right, kid?

  Caint say, he replies cautiously, picking up the dubious repast and sniffing it. Aint never seed the schoolmarm’s crupper.

  That sets them all to howling and hooting and shooting off their firearms. If he could throw them off guard somehow, he still might get out of here, but he cannot think what might now surprise them. Awright, now tuck in thar, dammit, growls the rangy scar-faced man with the gleaming dome when the ruckus dies down, pointing at the plate with the barrel of his gun, afore yu git us all riled up!

  The testicles have the outward savor of gristly sponges soaked in urine with a strong whiff of the mustang’s asshole clinging to them, but he holds his breath and shoves them in, all the while watching his watchers for some lapse in their red-eyed attention. If he’d had some hope of passing this ordeal quickly, that hope soon withers. The tough rubbery scrotum will not surrender to his grinding teeth and in the end, so as not to throw up, he has to swallow the bloody mess whole, a process that seems to take forever and he thinks might kill him. Certainly any notions he may have nurtured about whipping out his new six-shooters and blasting his way out of here are entirely undone by the suffocating nausea that grips him and makes his knees buckle. He closes his watering eyes to concentrate on the simple task of ingurgitation and when, the lump sliding bellyward at last, he opens them again, he finds that his gunbelt and buckskin breeches have gone missing and a passageway has opened up from the table to the grand piano. What’s worse, he has been overtaken by a terrible prurience, so powerful and disturbing that that threat of hammering silver studs into his organ, so suddenly engorged now, seems less a menace than a means of relief. It feels as if it wants to burst right out of itself like a sausage puffing up on the fire.

  Haw! Looks like them hoss balls done the trick!

  Time fer him t’meet the marm!

  The table is tipped from behind; he falls, smacking his bare nates on the tabletop, skids to the floor. At the far end of the aisle, in great distress, held down on the piano by the men of the saloon, is the pale widow woman he has seen twice before. He stumbles toward her, intent on rescuing her, or pretty sure he is, poked and prodded from behind, tugged forward by his own quivering member. She is weeping, her limbs outpinned, tossing her head from side to side, her tight dark bun coming unraveled in her anguish, her black dress twisted around her body. She cries out in alarm when she glimpses the enflamed state he’s in, wrenches away, begging for mercy. Dont worry, it’s awright, mam, he gasps, gripping the offending element in both fists, but he’s not certain that’s true. He can’t even hang on to it; it keeps jumping out of his grasp with a prickly life of its own.

  Thar she is, kid, snarls a scrubby little wall-eyed runt with side-whiskers. Go git it!

  I caint! I—I jest had some!

  No, y’aint, says the scrub, his eyes rolling in contrary directions. Not none a this, cowboy.

  Nobody has, son. We been savin her back.

  Her bodice is ripped open, her skirts flung back, exposing the webbed complications of her underclothing. And also the proximity of her flesh, the awesome profundity of it, beneath this frail wrap. It is that wrap, that delicate black armor, that he is determined to protect, with his life if need be, even as his hands, unbidden, rip it to shreds. He clenches them into fists to bury the clawing nails and the fists punch the air wildly as though trying to escape the governance of his arms. Dont be skeered, mam, I wuz jest leavin, he wheezes, as his hips slam in between her forcibly spread thighs with the power of a bucking bull, his body’s uncontrollable violence terrifying him as much as it does the agonizing woman below him.

  Hell fire, whutsamatter, kid? Dont yu know whar t’stick the fuckin thing? grumbles a goateed fat man in a black string tie and gambler’s broadcloth coat. Irritably, the man flicks away his cigar butt and takes hold of the bucking organ to steer it in. That does it. His flying fists have been just aching to reach out and bust something solid: in relief, he wheels now and slugs the fat man so hard in the face he drives his red pocked nose completely inside his head; he has to give a hard yank after to suck his fist out before the fat man keels over backwards, his goatee now poking up like a feather duster over the puckery soft hole between his eyes, which have come together like kissing billiard balls.

  Though for a moment
the blow liberates his mind and hands from their tempestuous assault, it doesn’t stop his member from seeking out its target on its own. As it batters at her portal’s last velutinous defense, she looks mournfully up at him and begs him to pray with her, please, before fulfilling his desperate designs, and she nods toward a Bible lying beside her on the piano top. My pleasure, mam, he gasps, his hands grabbing up the Bible as though to tear it to shreds (has he already breached her last line of defense? something soft, furry, wet—!) and inside it, buried in cutaway pages, he finds an old pistol with a black leather handle—he whips it out and blasts away at the lowlife surrounding him, starting with the drunken rubes pinning her limbs. The dead ones go down like lead sinkers and the live ones scatter as though blown out of the place by a high wind and he feels a prodigious heaving in his loins that blinds him momentarily with its explosive intensity.

  When he opens his eyes again, sprawled out on the grand piano with his bare butt in the air, the saloon is empty except for the dead bodies lying around like lumpy gunnysacks and the hunchbacked piano player, sitting alone at the keyboard in his yellow suspenders with a hand-rolled cigarillo dangling from his liverish lips, knocking out a little tune which he recognizes as a taunting nursery song. Even the beautiful widow woman is gone, all evidence of his powerful emission likewise, the Bible, the black-handled pistol, the fearsome prurience. But his buckskin breeches are back, draped over a nearby chairback, along with his gunbelt and fancy new weapons, his white kid gloves with the fingertips cut away.