Dead in the West

by Joe R. Lansdale

He switched the bottle to his left hand, and his right-hardly aware of the desire of his brain—quick-drew his revolver and calmly shot the spider into oblivion.

  V

  Montclaire was beating on the door.

  Plaster rained down from the ceiling and fell on the Reverend's impassive face.

  The Reverend got up, opened the door as he stuck the Navy back in his sash. "You okay, Reverend?" Montclaire said.

  The Reverend leaned against the doorjamb. "A spider. The devil's own creatures. I cannot abide them."

  "A spider? You shot a spider?"

  The Reverend nodded.

  Montclaire moved closer to the doorway for a look inside. The sun was lancing through a slit in the curtains, catching the drifting plaster in its rays. It looked like a fine snow. He looked at the hole in the ceiling. There were legs around the hole. The bullet had punched the big spider dead center and the legs had stuck to the ceiling, glued there by spider juice.

  Before pulling his head out, Montclaire saw the whisky bottle setting beside the bed.

  "You got him, I hope," Montclaire said sarcastically.

  "Right between the eyes."

  "Now look here. Preacher or not, I can't have people shooting up my hotel. I run a nice respectable place here...."

  "It's an outhouse and you know it. You should pay me to stay here."

  Montclaire opened his mouth, but something on the Reverend's face held him.

  The Reverend reached into his pocket and took out a fist full of bills. "Here's a dollar for the spider. Five for the hole."

  "Well sir, I don't know..."

  "That's respectable spider bounty, Montclaire, and it's my head beneath the hole if it rains."

  "That's true," Montclaire said. "But I run a respectable hotel here, and I should be compensated for...."

  "Take it or leave it, windbag."

  Looking indignant about it, but not too indignant, Montclaire held out his hand. The Reverend put the promised bills there.

  "I suppose that is fair enough, Reverend. But remember my customers pay for peace and quiet as well as lodging and...."

  The Reverend stepped back into the room and took hold of the door.

  "Then give us some peace and quiet." He slammed the door in Montclaire's face.

  Montclaire took his money and went downstairs, thinking of better things to do with it than repair a hole in the ceiling of room thirteen.

  VI

  He had killed the spider because it was part of his recurring nightmare. So bad was this night dream, he hated to see the sun fall down behind the sky and die in shadow, the time of sleep to draw near.

  The dream was full of warped memories. They flashed through the depths of his mind like ghosts. And the most terrifying part concerned the spider—or spiderlike thing. It was as if it were supposed to represent or warn him of something.

  One full year of that dream with the pressure of its darkness growing heavier each time.

  And it was as if it were pushing him, guiding him toward some destination, some destiny he was to fulfill.

  Or perhaps it was nothing more than the shadows of his dying faith, trying to collect themselves once again into a solid lie.

  But if there was something to them, guided by heaven or hell, he felt deep in his bones that that something was to be found here. In Mud Creek.

  Why he was not certain. Certainly God had long ago given up on him. If this was to be his last showdown, God would not be on hand to aid him.

  He tried not to think about it. He took a sip of his whisky.

  He looked at the ceiling. "Why has thou forsaken me?"

  After a minute of silence a grim smile parted his lips. He lifted the bottle upwards as if in toast.

  "That's what I thought you'd say."

  He drank a long drought of his liquid hell.

  VII

  Slow and easy—the contents of the bottle disappearing with the slow light of the sun—

  the Reverend drank, headed toward that dark riverbank where he would board the black dream boat that sailed into view each time he stupored himself to sleep.

  The bottle was empty.

  Groggy, the Reverend sat up in bed and reached for his saddlebags and his next coin of passage. He took out another bottle, removed the cloth, spat away the cork, and resumed his position. After three sips his hand eased to the side of the bed, and the bottle slipped from it, landed upright on the floor—a few drops sloshing from the lip.

  The curtains billowed in the open window like blue bloated tongues.

  The wind was cool-damp with rain. Thunder rumbled gently.

  And the Reverend descended into nightmare.

  There was a boat and the Reverend got on it. The boatman was dressed in black, hooded.

  A glimpse of his face showed nothing more than a skull with hollow eye sockets. The boatman took six bits from the Reverend for passage, poled away from shore.

  The river itself was darker than the shit from Satan's bowels. From time to time, white faces with dead eyes would bob to the surface like fishing corks, then drift back down into the blackness leaving not a ripple.

  Up shit river without a paddle.

  The boatman poled on down this peculiar river Styx with East Texas shores, and along these shores, the Reverend saw the events of his life as if they were part of a play performed for river travelers.

  But none of the events he saw were the good ones, just the dung of his life, save one—

  and it was a blessing as well as a curse.

  There on the shore, in plain sight—unlike the way it had happened in a bed in the dark of his sister's room— were he and his sister, holding each other in sweaty embrace, copulating like farm animals. In his memory, it had always been a sweet night like a velvet embrace, there had been love as well as passion. But this was lust, pure and simple.

  It was not pleasant to look at.

  He tried to look away from the next scene of the play, but his eyes remained latched. And before the boat sailed on, he watched his father materialize and discover them, and he heard his father curse them and damn them both. Then his younger self was bolting for his pants and leaping (it had been a window in real life) outwards and away—to run along the banks of the river, until his form grew dark and fell apart like fragments of smoked glass.

  And the boat sailed on.

  The last year of the Civil War (a kid then) fighting for the South and losing, knowing too much about death at the age of eighteen.

  The men he had slain (dressed in blood-spattered Yankee uniforms) lined up along the bank to wave sadly at him. If it had not been so painful, it would have been comical.

  Other scenes: round after round of ammunition exiting through the barrel of his Navy, first as a cap and ball revolver, then later as a converted cartridge revolver, round after round until he could hit nickels tossed into the air and split playing cards along the edge by shooting over his shoulder while holding a mirror in his other hand.

  The men he had slain outside of war—those who had pushed him, and those who he had eliminated for their sins against God—lined up along the bank now to smile (sometimes bloody smiles) and wave bye-bye.

  (Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.)

  He could not look away. He watched the dead men recede into darkness.

  More of his life came up in acts and scenes along the river. All of it was shit.

  He turned to look at the opposite shore, and the play there was no better. It was the same as the opposite bank.

  Sail away.

  And now—ahead of him—surfacing from the water, as always, was the worst part of his dream.

  Spidery legs broke the surface of the water—too many legs for a true spider, there were ten—wriggling. And then the bulbous body surfaced with them: a giant spiderlike thing with huge red eyes that housed some dark and horrid intelligence.

  The spider was as wide as the river. Its legs brushed the banks on either side.

  The boatman did n
ot veer. He poled stiffly on.

  The Reverend reached for his gun. And it was not there. He was butt-ass naked, shrivel-dicked and scared.

  He wanted to open his mouth and yell, but he could not. It was as if fear had sewn his lips shut.

  The spider made him tremble, and he could not understand it. Size or not. Red, evil eyes or not. He had faced men, sometimes three at once, and he had sent them all to hell on their shadows, and not once, not even for a fraction of a second, had he known true fear.

  Until now, in these dreams. (God, let them be dreams.) The Reverend found that he could not look away from the spider-thing's eyes. It was as if they were swollen with all his sins and weaknesses.

  The boat sailed on.

  The spider-thing opened its black hair-lined maw, and the boat sailed into its mouth, and as the bow of the boat and the boatman disappeared into the black stench of the creature, the Reverend lost sight of the red eyes, and then all he saw was blackness, and that blackness closed out the light behind him and he was one with hell—

  He awoke sweating.

  He felt cold and trembly as he sat up in bed.

  Lightning was flashing consistently. It was bright enough to be seen through the thick curtains, and when the wind billowed them out, it could be seen even more clearly. The curtains flapped at him like wraiths with their tails nailed to the wall. Rain blew in the window, onto the bed and the toes of his boots. The boots glistened in the lightning flashes like wet snake hide.

  Rolling out of bed, he picked up the whisky bottle and took a long drink. It did him no good. It did not feel warm against the back of his throat, and it left no glow in his belly. It might as well have been sun-warmed water.

  He went to the window, started to close it, but changed his mind.

  He stuck his face out of it into the rain and the wind, as if inviting lightning to reach down from the sky and shatter his head like a pumpkin.

  The lightning did not take the bait.

  The rain washed his hair into his face, joined the sweat and tears there, dribbled down his shirt front and the back of his collar where the hair flipped.

  "Can I not be forgiven?" he asked softly. "I loved her. Deep-down and honest solid, same as any man loves any woman. We were not cow and bull copulating in the meadows. It was love, sister or not. Do you hear me, you old bastard, it was love?"

  Suddenly he laughed at himself. He was sounding Shakespearean, or like some of that bad poetry he had read by Captain Jack Crawford.

  But the humor did not hold.

  He lifted his face to the heavens again, let the rain strike his eyes until they hurt. "For the love of Jesus, oh Lord, forgive me my weakness of the flesh. Test me. Try me. I would do anything for your forgiveness."

  As before, there was no answer.

  He went back to the bed and joined the bottle. The rain was blowing in violently now, coating the ends of the sheets. He didn't care.

  As he sipped, he thought of his life and how he had lived it. It seemed nothing more than a dark, dirty lie.

  There was no God. His sermons were words to fill the air and float about like puffs of ragweed.

  He slid down the bed and reached his Bible from his coat pocket. It was a well-thumbed edition. Long ago he had lost his passion for it. Sermons were his bread and butter, nothing more. He realized it had been that way for some time.

  Stretching out on the bed again, he lay with his back against the headboard—the bottle in one hand, the Bible in the other. He sipped from his bottle.

  "Lies," he yelled abruptly, and with all his strength, he tossed the Bible toward the window with, "Take this, you heavenly bastard!"

  His aim was off. It did not go through the open part of the window as he had planned. It hit high up, and even before the glass broke, he knew he would be buying a new one for fat Montclaire.

  The glass shattered, and the Bible flapped out into the night like a multiwinged bird.

  Then, even as he watched, it reached a point of darkness beyond his vision, and as he was bringing the whisky bottle to his lips, it came flapping back through like a homing pigeon. It struck the bottle, and shattered it, dealt him a stunning blow to the face. Glass from the bottle cut his chin and blood dribbled down.

  He sat completely upright.

  In his lap lay the Bible. Open.

  A droplet of blood dripped from his chin and landed in the left-hand margin of Revelations 22:12.

  He read it.

  AND BEHOLD, I COME QUICKLY; AND MY REWARD IS WITH ME, TO GIVE TO

  EVERY MAN ACCORDING AS HIS WORK SHALL BE.

  Another drop hit next to verse 14.

  BLESSED ARE THEY WHO DO HIS COMMANDMENTS, THAT THEY MAY

  HAVE RIGHT TO THE TREE OF LIFE, AND MAY ENTER IN THROUGH THE

  GATES OF THE CITY.

  Slowly, the Reverend closed the book.

  There was a lump like a hairball in his throat. He and the bed reeked of rain and whisky, and there was also the faint aroma of his blood.

  He worked the lump from his throat and fell on his knees beside the bed, hands clasped.

  "Thy will be done, oh Lord. Thy will be done."

  Still on his knees, he prayed for an hour, and it was the first time he had done so in a long time and deeply meant it.

  Later, he cleaned himself at the basin, and shook the sheets free of glass, undressed, bedded proper.

  Before he drifted off, he wondered if he would be worthy of whatever test the Lord had prepared for him here in Mud Creek.

  It did not matter. Whatever it was, he would try with all his might.

  He slept.

  And he did not dream.

  VIII

  With the sun kicked out and a gold doubloon moon rose in its place—a moon that shone down with a bright, almost unnatural hue on Mud Creek and the surrounding countryside—the nightwalkers began to walk.

  The livery gave up its tenant—the padlock dripping off into the dirt like melted butter, only to fall to the ground whole again, and finally to return locked and solid to its place.

  Just outside of town at the Furgesons, their little month old girl died. Next morning, amidst much wailing, it would be attributed to natural causes.

  A few yard pets disappeared, though one small dog was found the next morning with its belly savaged. The way it was torn up wolves were suspicioned.

  Certainly there had been a wolf howling last night.

  From the sound of it, a large one.

  …

  And it was almost time.

  …

  IX

  Next morning the Reverend cleaned his suit, and put on a fresh shirt from his saddlebag, spit-polished his boots.

  He did not start his morning with a swig of whisky this time. He truly craved bacon and eggs and a cup of coffee.

  He went over to Molly McGuire's for breakfast.

  The cafe was bustling, noisy.

  Waitresses moved back and forth from kitchen to table like ants from harvest to home.

  They carried plates of flapjacks, bacon and eggs, pots of steaming coffee.

  From his vantage point in the doorway, the Reverend saw one old codger grab a handful of a waitress' ass. She slapped it away in a professional manner, set the fellow's plate down without losing her smile.

  At a table against the wall, he spotted the sheriff's badge. It was pinned on a broad-shouldered man of medium height and a sadly handsome appearance. That was the man he needed to see.

  The sheriff was sitting at the table with a considerably older man who looked as weathered as an Indian's moccasins.

  There was an empty table next to them, and as they were talking briskly back and forth, waving their hands about, he decided to take up that position until a good opportunity presented itself.

  When he was seated, he strained an ear for their conversation. He was not even aware of the habit. He had learned it long ago. When traveling from town to town, preparing a sermon, he liked to eavesdrop on what was said. Sometimes it gave hi
m the ability to work into his sermon a message that an individual would recognize. If he heard some man gloating over how he was dipping his wick into another man's wife, he would speak his sermon in such a way that the man might think God had given the preacher inside information.

  It came in handy when the offering plate was passed. With their guilt boiled to the surface, the repenters (at least for that moment) would put in heavily, trying to buy off God.

  As of last night, the Reverend had decided he would return to the original inspiration of his sermons. Desire to spread the gospel. He was God's boy again, and preaching purely for coinage to afford whisky was no longer his design.

  Yet old habits—like eavesdropping—die hard.

  "Well," said the older man to the sheriff, "I guess that means you ain't come up with nothing?"

  "Not a thing. I rode out the stage trail this morning. Didn't see hide or hair of the passengers.... Could have been Indians, I guess. Or robbers."

  '"You're grabbing at farts," the older man said. "Matt, you know well as I do there ain't been no Indian trouble around here in years. 'Cept maybe that medicine show fellow and his woman, and we took care of that problem."

  "You hung him. Not me. I wasn't there."

  "Judas didn't nail up Jesus either," the older man said with a mean smile. "Cut the holy-on-me shit, boy. You gave him to us. It's the same thing. And it ain't nothing to feel guilty for. He was just an Indian and that gal was half nigger at the least."

  "He was an innocent man."

  "Like the feller said, 'only good Injun is a dead'n'. And I'll second that on niggers, greasers, and half-bloods."

  The Reverend noticed that Matt's face drew up in disgust, but he said nothing.

  "All right," the older man continued. "It wasn't Indians, and it damn sure wasn't no robbers. Didn't you say the bags wasn't bothered with?"

  Matt nodded. "Shitty robbers, I'd say. Polite like too. After they got the folks off the stage and hid them, they was nice enough to bring the stage on in, set the brake, and leave it in the middle of the goddamned street. Hell, I don't know why the lazy sonsabitches didn't just go on and feed the horses."

  The two sat silent for a moment, and the Reverend took this as his cue. He stood up and stepped over to their table.

  "Excuse me" said the Reverend to the sheriff, "I'd like a word with you."