Ghost Town: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  He turns a corner (there is a corner, the room is getting complicated) and comes upon a craps table with strange little misshapen dice, more like real knucklebones, which they probably are. Set down, sheriff, and shake an elbow, says the scrubby skew-jawed fellow in dun-colored rags and bandanna headband who is working the table, a swarthy and disreputable wretch who is vaguely familiar. His broken arm is in a rawhide sling, its hand fingerless, and there’s a fresh red weal across his rough cheeks, the sort of cut made by a horsewhip. Here, he can no longer hear the chanteuse; instead, at the back by the big wheel of fortune, there is a choral rhythmic rise and fall of drunken whoops, so it’s likely she’s back there somewhere. Not someone he cares to see just now. Go ahaid’n roll em, sheriff, says the wampus-jawed scrub, wagging the stump at the end of his broken arm. Them sad tats is mine. Wuz.

  Aint got no stake. But dont I know yu from sumwhars? With his good hand, the wretch flashes a bent and rusty deputy’s badge, hidden away in his filthy rags. Whut? Yu my deppity?

  Useter be. But I lost my poke’n then some in thet wicked brace over by the big wheel. I hafta work fer this clip crib now.

  Whar’s the prizner then?

  Well we lost her too.

  Lost her—?

  T’thet hardass double-dealin shark over thar, the dodrabbid burglar whut operates this skin store. He’s the one whut give me this extry elbow and my own bones t’flop when I opened my big mouth after ketchin him with a holdout up his sleeve. He sees him now, enthroned behind a blackjack table under a glowing gas lamp, over by the wheel of fortune, an immense bald and beardless man in a white suit and ruffled shirt with blue string tie and golden studs, wearing blue-tinted spectacles smack up against his eyes. He sits as still and pale as stone, nothing moving except his little fat fingers, deftly flicking out the cards. The rhythmic whooping is coming from there and may be in response to the cards being dealt. The motherless asshole tuck us fer all we had, sheriff. Got the prizner in the bargain.

  Yu done wrong. She warnt a stake.

  I know it.

  Whut’s he done with her?

  Well. His ex-deputy hesitates. It aint nice. He glances uneasily over his shoulder. Best go on over thar’n see fer yerself.

  There’s an icy chill on his heart and a burning rage at the same time and he feels like he might go crazy with the sudden antipodal violence of his feelings, but he bites down hard and collects himself and sets his hat square over his brow and drops his hands flat to his sides and straightens up his back and lowers his head and, with measured strides, makes his way over toward the glowing fat man at the blackjack table. The room seems to have spread out somewhat or to be spreading out as he proceeds, and there are new turns and corners he must bear around, sudden congestions of loud drunken gamblers he must thread his way through, and sometimes the blackjack dealer seems further away than when he first set out, but he presses on, learning to follow not his eyes but his ears (those whoops and hollers), and so is drawn in time into the crowd of men around the blackjack table. What is provoking their rhythmic hoots, he sees when he gets there, is the sight of the schoolmarm stretched out upon the slowly spinning wheel of fortune, her black skirts falling past her knees each time she’s upside down. He tries not to watch this but is himself somewhat mesmerized by the rhythmic rising and falling, revealing and concealing, of the schoolmarm’s dazzling white knees, the spell broken only when he realizes that she is gazing directly at him as she rotates with a look compounded of fury, humiliation, and anguished appeal. It is a gaze most riveting when she is upside down and the whoops are loudest, her eyes then darkly underscored by eyebrows as if bagged with grief, her nose with its flared nostrils fiercely horning her brow between them, the exposed knees above not unlike a bitter thought, and a reproach.

  He steps forward, not knowing what he will do, but before he can reach the table, a tall bald man with tattooed hair pushes everyone aside and, tossing down a buckskin purse, seats himself before it. Dole me some paint thar, yu chiselin jackleg! he bellows with drunken bravado, twirling the waxed ends of his handlebar mustache. He’s seen him before, testing out the gallows, except that since then he’s acquired a wooden leg. His partner, the one-eared mestizo, now wearing a bear claw in his nose and an erect feather in a headband, hovers nearby with his pants gaped open under his overhanging belly. I’m aimin t’win summa thet gyratin pussy fer my bud’n me, and I dont wanta ketch yu spikin, stackin, trimmin, rimplin, nickin, nor ginnyin up in no manner them books, dont wanta see no shiners, cold decks, coolers, nor holdouts, nor witness no great miracles a extry cards or a excess a greased bullets. Yu hear? So now rumble the flats, yu ole grifter, and cut me a kiss.

  The dealer, holding the deck of cards in his soft smooth bejeweled hands as a sage might clasp a prayerbook, has sat listening to all this bluster with serene indifference, his hairless head settled upon his layered folds of chin like a creamy mound of milk curd, eyes hidden behind the sky-blue spectacles, which seem almost pasted to them. The tinted spectacles, he knows, are for reading the backs of doped cards, the polished rings for mirroring the deal, a pricking poker ring no doubt among them, and the man’s sleeves and linen vest are bulked and squared by the mechanical holdout devices concealed within. When, so minimally one can almost not see the movement, he shuffles, cuts, and deals, he seems to use at least three different decks, crosscutting a pair of them, and the deal is from the bottom of the only deck in view at any one time, or at least not from the top.

  The squint-eyed man with the tattooed hair rises up and kicks his chair back with his wooden leg. I jest come unanimously to the conclusion yu been cheatin, he shouts, as the dealer calmly slides the man’s leather purse into his heap of winnings, then takes up the deck to reshuffle it, so smoothly that the deck seems like a small restless creature trapped between his soft pale hands. Behind him, the schoolmarm, bound to the fortune wheel, grimly turns and turns, though now, with the bald man on his feet, or foot, the rhythmic whooping dies away.

  Easy, podnuh, whispers the one-eared mestizo, his hand inside his pants. He spits over his shoulder, away from the dealer. He’s awmighty fast, thet sharper. Dont try him. It aint judicious.

  Shet up, yu yellabellied cyclops,’n gimme room! the bald man roars. He stands there before the bespectacled dealer, legs apart and leaning on his pegleg, shoulders tensed, elbows out, hands hovering an inch from his gunbutts. I’m callin yer bluff, yu flim-flammin cartload a hossshit!

  A hole opens up explosively in the bald man’s chest like a post has been driven through it, kicking him back into the crowd, the dealer having calmly drawn, fired, and reholstered without even interrupting his steady two-handed shuffle of the cards. He sets the deck down and spreads his plump palms to either side as though to say: Any other sucker here care to try his luck?

  He makes certain his sheriffs badge is in plain view, tugs at the brim of his hat, hitches his gunbelt, and steps into the well-lit space just abruptly vacated by the peglegged man with the tattooed hair. He picks up the fallen chair, watching the dealer closely, and sets it down in front of the blackjack table but remains standing. I’m askin yu t’return me back my prizner, he says quietly. He has a hunch about the dealer now, something he grows more convinced of the longer he stands there studying him. She warnt a legal bet. Yu knowed thet. I may hafta close this entaprize down.

  His weedy ex-deputy with the busted arm leans close to the dealer, who seems, though his thick lips do not move, to whisper something in his crumpled ear. He sez he dont spect thet’ll happen, says the ex-deputy out the side of his mouth. Behind the mountainous fat man, the revolving schoolmarm’s white knees rise into view like a pair of expressionless stocking-capped puppets, then fall into curtained obscurity, over and over, but he steels himself to pay them no heed, and to ignore as well her burning gaze, for now he must think purely on one thing and one thing only. He sez ifn yu want back thet renegade hoss thief, yu should oughter set yerself down’n play him a hand fer her.

  Cai
nt. Aint got no poke. Yes, he’s sure of it now. It’s why he sits so still. Listening. To everything. His ears thumbing the least sound the way his pink-tipped sandpapered fingers caress the cards. Behind those blue spectacles, the man is blind.

  Well whut about yer boots? suggests the ex-deputy. Or yer weepons? He shakes his head. The ex-deputy whispers something in the fat man’s ear, then tips his own ear close to attend to the reply. Well awright, he sez. Yer life then, he sez. Yer’n fer her’n.

  Hunh. Shore, he shrugs, and sits down on the edge of the chair to get his voice into the right position. Aint wuth a plug nickel nohow. A flicker of amusement seems to cross the fat man’s face, the reawakened cards fluttering between his hands like a caged titmouse, or a feeding hummingbird. He removes his spurs so they will not betray him, and then, leaving his voice behind, rises silently from the chair to slip around behind the dealer. Reglar five-card stud, his voice says. Face up. Dont want nuthin hid. The dealer offers the deck toward the chair. No cut, mister. Jest dole em out. The room has fallen deadly silent as he circles round, nothing to be heard but the creaking and ticking of the wheel of fortune, all murmurs stilled, which may be perplexing the fat man, though he gives no sign of it. With barely a visible movement, he deals the empty chair a jack and himself a king. I reckon yu’re tryin t’tell me sumthin, his voice says from the chair, keeping up the patter to cover his movements. Something an old deerhunter once taught him as a way of confusing his prey. It was a simple trick and so natural that, once he learned it, he was amazed he had not always known how to do it. But a pair a these here young blades’ll beat a sucked-out ole bulldog any day, his voice adds cockily when a second jack falls, a second king of course immediately following on. Uh-oh, says his voice. Damn my luck. Pears I’ll require a third one a them dandies jest t’stay in this shootout. Which he gets, it in turn topped by a third king. He is behind the dealer now, gazing down upon his bubbly mound of glowing pate. Well would yu lookit thet, says his voice, as the fourth jack is turned up. I reckon now, barrin miracles, the prizner’s mine. Stealthily, as the fourth king falls, he unsheathes his bowie knife. The dealer’s head twitches slightly as though he might have heard something out of order and were cocking his ear toward it, so his voice says from the chair: Aint thet sumthin! Four jacks! Four kings! But we aint done yet, podnuh. Yu owe me another card. Yu aint doled out but four. The fat man hesitates, tipping slightly toward the voice, then, somewhat impatiently, flicks out a black queen, which falls like a provocation between the two hands of armed men. Well ifn thet dont beat all, his voice exclaims. How’d thet fifth jack git in thar? The dealer starts, seems about to reach for his gun or the card, but stays his hand and, after the briefest hesitation, flips over a fifth king. Haw, says the voice. Nuthin but a mizzerbul deuce. Gotcha, ole man! And as the gun comes out and blasts the chair away, he buries the blade deep in the dealer’s throat, slicing from side to side through the thick piled-up flesh like stirring up a bucket of lard.

  The man does not fall over but continues to sit there in his rotundity as before, his head slumping forward slightly as though in disappointment, his blue spectacles skidding down his nose away from the puckery dimples where eyes once were. His gun hand twitches off another shot, shattering an overhead lamp and sending everyone diving for cover, then turns up its palm and lets the pistol slip away like a discard. A white fatty ooze leaks from the slit throat, slowly turning pink. He wipes his blade on the shoulders of the man’s white linen suit, triggering a mechanical holdout mechanism that sends a few aces flying out his sleeves, and then he carefully resheathes it, eyeing the others all the while as they pick themselves up and study this new circumstance. He’s not sure how they will take it or just who this dealer was to them, so to distract them from any troublous thoughts they may be having, he says: Looks like them winnins is up fer grabs, gentamin.

  That sets off the usual crazed melee, and while they are going at it he arrests the wheel of fortune to free the schoolmarm. When he releases her wrists, he half expects her to slap his face again, but instead she faints and collapses over his shoulder, her hands loosely whacking him behind, so that he has to unbind her hips and ankles with the full weight of her upon him. It is getting ugly in the churchroom, guns and knives are out and fists and bottles are flying, so he quickly sidles out of there, toting her beam-high over his shoulder like a saddlebag, the room conveniently shrinking toward the exit to hasten his passage. At the door, before darting out into the night, he glances back over his free shoulder at the mayhem within (this is his town and for all he knows the only people he has ever had and he is about to leave them now forever) and sees through the haze the dead dealer, still slumped there under the glowing lamp like an ancient melancholic ruin, his hairless blue-bespectacled head slowly sinking away into his oozing throat.

  He strides, under a tapestry of faintly pulsing stars, through the desolate town, whistling softly for his horse, one hand gripping a lax tender thigh, the other clasped behind her skirted knees. He assumes the church will not long contain the turmoil within, but his hopes of getting out of here quickly are fading. He headed first for the blacksmith’s shed where last he spied the black mare, but the shed was not where he remembered it to be; finding the jailhouse with the gallows out front instead, he made next for the stables but wound up again at the jail. She was getting heavy, so he thought to hide her in her schoolhouse until he could locate the mare or some other horse or pair of horses, but he has come once more to the gallows and the jailhouse, or they have come to him. He stands there by the hanging place in the hushed darkness, whistling softly, frustration welling up in his breast (where is that damned horse?), trying to get his bearings, his cheek pressed against a flexuous hip, his arms hugging her legs as if they were the one sure thing he might still hold on to. Tacked up on the scaffold is one of the posters announcing the schoolmarm’s high-noon hanging on the morrow, though in the dim starlight her portrait’s fierce severity seems to have mellowed, as though surrendering to whatever fate awaits her. He is determined she will not hang—if asked why he has come here, he would now say this was why—and it is as if the portrait recognizes that and so looks out upon him more with hope than outrage; but just how he is to accomplish her rescue is not yet clear to him, which may account for the gentle perplexity he also seems to read upon the portrait’s face, its gaze beseeching, its lips slightly parted as though to ask a question, or receive a kiss. Of farewell? He feels a pricking in the corners of his eyes and water forms there, which he supposes must be tears. He must not fail her. He turns his head away from that dread instrument with its noosed rope hanging high against the night, and this loner, this aloof and restless gunslinger, footloose, free, beholden to no one and no thing, presses his lips reverently against the softness there upon his shoulder, gazing past the sweet black hillock of her haunch at the field of throbbing stars in the moonless sky beyond and thinking: I am wholly lost and am not who I thought I was.

  He is about to set off on another search for horse or cover when he hears the church letting out behind him and the men pouring clamorously into the street. There’s no time; they seem to be approaching rapidly from all directions, hollering out their rapturous oaths and maledictions and firing off their weapons. He jogs heavily across the street, feeling pursued now, the schoolmarm’s head bouncing against his back (the beseeching gaze, parted lips: he’s not thinking upon these now, though he knows he surely will again), and ducks into the jailhouse, but, encumbered by the burden of her, he cannot throw the bolt before the men of the town come pounding in and push him back.

  Yo, sheriff! Lookit whut yu got thar!

  Haw! Aint she a gratifyin sight!

  Done hit the jackpot, the sheriff did!

  They light the lamps and circle about him, filling up the room, raucously admiring the woman slung over his shoulder, reaching out to try to palpate her lifeless parts or poke at them with their greasy gunbarrels. He fends them off as best he can, backing toward the cell door, consider
ing his choices. Probably he has none.

  We wuz afeerd we wuz gonna miss out our neck-stretchin party!

  Yu done good, sheriff! Yu done right by the lawr!

  Now whynt yu go treat yerself to a easeful potation, podnuh, and rest up fer the big day, says a toothless pop-eyed hunchback tented in a voluminous white linen jacket with a deputy’s badge pinned upside down to its stained lapel. We’ll take keera the prizner fer yu.

  No, he says. In former times he would have simply shot his way out of here, tried to; can’t do that now. Yu’ll leave her be. She aint gonna hang.

  Whut—?

  I’m lettin her go.

  Yu caint do thet, sheriff! Yu aint got the right!

  We built thet new gallows jest fer her!

  Hadta use up the whole back halfa the feed store fer the wood!

  Caint hep thet. She aint the one. I stole thet hoss.

  Yu whut—?

  The men fall back momentarily, their jovial mien turned dark, while under his hand the schoolmarm’s thigh twitches and stiffens as though tweaked awake by his stark confession. Put me down, she demands icily from behind his back, and all the softness seems to go out of her. Immediately, please.

  Tarnation, someone mutters, and fires a gob into the cell behind him for exclamatory punctuation. Looks like we’ll hafta change the pitcher on all them fuckin posters.

  He drops to his knees to set her feet on the floor, watched closely by the surly men crowding round once more, and she straightens up above him, touching his shoulder briefly to brace herself, a touch, though merely expedient, for which he is grateful. He continues to kneel there for a moment, as if petitioning for mercy, which is perhaps what he’s doing, but without another word she turns on her stolid black heels and, hands clasped at her waist, struts away toward the door, the men removing their hats and backing off to let her pass. It is not his wont to break a silence, but faced with the dreadful and endless one to which he is now condemned (which he will confront, when she is gone, with the quiet stoicism that is his nature and by which he’s known, and has known himself), he cannot help himself: Yu aint never even thanked me, he calls out.