At Night She Cries, While He Rides His Steed

by Ross Patterson

  As all the people gasped in horror, that fringed asshole hit the ground with a collision so violent that his organs exploded out of his body. When the carnies rushed to attend to what was left of him, my steed climbed out of the pool and strode over to me. No one even noticed us ride off together, and we’ve never been apart since. You tell me that you’ve had a stronger relationship than that in your whole life, and I’ll let you piss on my face sitting down.

  * * *

  I. A power wash is when a woman with huge breasts soaps them up and washes you with them in a back-and-forth motion with enough power to kill a small elk.

  II. I’m putting Jesus in the same sentence as me out of respect, but truthfully I don’t see him balling out like me.

  Chapter Four

  EVERY MAN NEEDS A DYNAMITE MONTAGE TO FEEL ALIVE

  The warm sun shines down through the slats of the barn against the buttons on my jeans. It feels like my cock is being burned off, and I jolt upright. I wipe my eyes and notice a half bottle of whiskey near me. I take a swig to get the engines going, then pull down my pants and take a shit in the stall where my horse shits. Hard clumps hit the hay right next to his pile.

  “Daniel, come clean out the fucking stable! There’s shit all over it!”

  “Damn it! Why is it always me, Dad?”

  I stumble outside the barn and see four of my boys holding ladles, drinking out of a large trough full of water. Casually nudging them aside, I dunk my head in. Louretta comes running out of the house screaming at me so loudly I can physically hear her underwater.

  “Saint James, that’s the clean drinking water for the kids!”

  “Goddamn it, woman, it’s not like we don’t have an entire river that runs right in front of our fucking house. I’m going out for the day.”

  I blow past her into the house, grabbing a shirt, my cowboy boots, and a large, overstuffed saddlebag by the front door. My steed comes running out of the barn with his saddle already on. One of my middle kids is on all fours in front of me, so I use his back to step up onto my horse.

  “Dad, I was playing jacks!” my son says.

  “You’re welcome, buddy,” I say as I begin to trot off. Looking back, I notice Daniel shaking his head as he shovels my shit out of the barn.

  “This fucking stinks, Dad!” he says to me.

  I look at him and say, “I tell you what, you go find some gold, then maybe you can come out and shit in the barn then tell someone else to clean it up. Deal?”

  I salute everyone and ride off into the distance. It’s days like these where I just need some time to myself to cool off and blow shit up. I need a fucking sweet dynamite montage. Hell, every man needs one.

  Riding through the forest, I bear down on my steed while expertly holding a lit match in between my teeth, spotting my first target—a beautiful set of ten baby Christmas trees. I grab a stick of dynamite from my saddlebag, light it, and throw it behind my back no-look style.I The explosion uproots the trees, and they crash to the ground. All I see is a few stumps smoldering as a dirt cloud shoots high up into the air.

  Now that I’m in a rhythm, I see a large moose off to my left. I skyhook a lit stick over my head—boom! That fucker explodes into a thousand pieces. Chunks of fur and blood are scattered all over the trees and my clothes. A set of moose teeth and one hoof are all that remain.

  “Fuck yeah! I just did that!” I say to myself out loud.

  After two hours of blowing shit up, I stop next to the river and jump down from my horse. I hear hunger pains from my steed, so I reach into my saddlebag and grab the last stick of dynamite.

  “You hungry, buddy?”

  He nods that he is. “Okay, okay. Stand back.”

  I light the final stick and casually toss it into the river. Trout and salmon explode out of the water and rain down from the sky in front of him. Typically, horses don’t eat fish, but mine has Champagne tastes just like I do. He grins with a look of satisfaction on his face as I bend down and drink out of the river, which has resumed a proper flow. With the water rushing over my lips, something washes up and sticks to the side of my face. I lift my head up and peel what feels like wet cloth off my cheek.

  Looking closely, I notice it’s my SJSJ handkerchief from last night, except now there’s a little blood on it. What the fuck? I unholster my guns and turn upstream, when all of the sudden—boom! The ground shakes beneath my feet, followed by men’s laughter echoing down the mountain. My acute sense of hearing detects nine white males in their late thirties and early forties, and one Asian male whose age is unknown because our calendar system is different.

  “Boss! You rich! You rich!” the Asian man screams.

  Son of a bitch. More laughter echoes louder. I know exactly what this means, and it isn’t good. Quickly, I holster back up and put my handkerchief in my pocket.

  For good measure, I also pull a small mango out of my saddlebag, make an incision in it, squeeze all the juice into my mouth, and snort a key bump of gunpowder. This concoction is known as a Standing Jonathan. It gives me strength throughout my quads and keeps my mind sharp in case I have to kill a large group of people at the same time. My friend Pete Newhouse, who dabbled in homosexuality, invented it. Pete died a couple years later fighting for what he believed in: same-sex clothing for his wife. He always dressed her like a dude, and she killed him for it.

  After pounding my Standing Jonathan, my mind is clearer than an albino’s iris as I ride my steed toward the chaos and confusion. I wish this book had a trip wire for this page, so that when you read that last line—“ride my steed toward the chaos and confusion”—Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor would kick in. Also, if a picture could pop out, of me with a huge boner, that would be dope too. I’ll also settle for an illustration, just saying.

  Riding up the side of the mountain, I come to a halt when I see an explosion inside a mining shaft, much like my own. A group of men stand around the mine’s opening, and a small Asian man comes running out covered in dirt and mud. He’s screaming and holding up a bloody piece of gold. Déjà vu hits me like a fist to my butthole.

  “What do we have here, gentlemen?” I ask.

  All the men turn at once and reach for their guns. I shoot the chunk of gold out of the Asian man’s hand, taking off two of his fingers as well. That might seem extreme, but blowing off two of his fingers will later help me to distinguish my Asian from theirs, so it is kind of a two-birds thing. The men freeze as the Asian man screams in pain. Amazingly, they’re hesitant to draw, even though it’s nine against one. That’s how fucking badass I am.

  “We don’t want no trouble,” one of them says in a thick Southern accent.

  “Okay. Then I want everyone to take off their pants and tell me what the fuck you’re doing here.”

  As the men bend down and start to undress, one of them pipes up, “Why do we have to take off our pants?”

  “In case one of you has any knives on you. I have fourteen knives strapped to various parts of my thighs and calves as we speak, but you can’t see them, can you?”

  Everyone shakes their heads no. Another man puts his hand up. “Hold up, boys. Nobody let their pants hit the ground. Are you the sheriff or something?”

  The men pause, pants at mid-thigh.

  “Some might call me the sheriff. I’m the richest man in town, so close enough.”

  The biggest and the oldest man laughs. He pulls up his pants and whistles with two fingers. Out of a makeshift tent in the distance behind him, a beautiful topless blonde woman with milkmaid braids rolls out a wheelbarrow full of gold. She looks like she just ran down the Swiss Alps through a perfect field of tits—that’s how flawless she is.

  My first thought is, “Holy shit, what if someone is richer than me? What will all the people in town think? Also, why didn’t I think of hiring topless women for my gold mine? That’s fucking genius.” I snap out of it and regain my focus.

  “Do you have a deed for this mine?” I ask.

  “Yup,” the big
man says as he pulls a folded-up paper out of his pocket and approaches me. He sticks two fingers into his mouth and again whistles loudly. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! One by one, dynamite explodes inside too many mine shafts to count. As I duck my head, he smiles broadly. Half of his teeth are missing, the other half are gold.

  “Also got deeds for the rest of ’em too.”

  The men all laugh in unison, exposing their gold teeth as well. A whole team of hot, topless Dutch women strut out of the tent on cue with empty wheelbarrows, rolling them to their respective mines. These guys are way more advanced than me. Also, these women are obviously 100 percent authentic European chicks. It isn’t like they are haggard and suffered through hardships to escape oppression. They look happy to be doing this shit. Jesus Christ. I feel my world ending as my vision blurs, staring at the deeds. Somehow, I’m able to make out the name that’s on all of them: the Schläger Bros. I’ve never heard of them.

  “The Schläger Brothers? Where are you from, and how come I’ve never heard of you?”

  “West Virginia originally, but we’ve been here almost two years. We’re mountain people; we don’t go into town much. I reckon we will now, though,” he says, almost challenging me.

  And then it starts to sink in. Perhaps my richness has caused me to become complacent. I haven’t even been on the lookout at all for competition these past four years. Have I let my big swinging dick get the best of me? I shake this notion off, and quickly regain my composure.

  “Where does the name Schläger come from?”

  “It’s German and Dutch, I’m told. Just like former president Martin Van Buren.”

  “Really? He took a shit in my outhouse as a kid.”

  “You don’t say?” he says as he softens. “Hey, man, I think we got off on the wrong foot. Would you like to join us for lunch and our ritual bukkake session?”

  Shit. I hesitate, trying to resist, but he has found my weakness. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

  As much as I hate what’s going on right now, a man never turns down a bukkake session. It’s just disrespectful. I begrudgingly follow the Schlägers as they head toward the tent. I’m definitely not in the right headspace you need to be in for an impromptu bukkake sesh. The biggest one smiles and pats me on the back.

  “Guess we could have left our pants off, boys!” he says.

  Everyone laughs as we walk into the huge tent. Mountains of gold nuggets rest on tables and makeshift scales. A huge pile of gold that has been ground down to dust is being divided by a couple brothers. One of them rolls up a dollar bill and snorts a monster fucking line of it. Next. Level. Shit. Holmes. He turns and hands me the rolled-up dollar and points to a huge rail.

  “You want a toot?”

  “No. I want two.”

  Feeling everyone’s eyes on me, I pull out my own double-nostril, gold-encrusted customized snorter and pile-drive two lines at once, one up each nostril. A hush falls over the room, and the brothers nod at one another, impressed. Another topless blonde woman grabs my arm and whispers in my ear.

  “This way, sir,” she says seductively in a Dutch accent.

  She leads me in another direction, where I see another smaller tent inside the tent I’m currently in. A tent inside of another tent = mind blown.

  Inside the smaller tent, I see more Schläger brothers standing in a line with their pants off in front of yet another beautiful nude blonde chick kneeling on the floor. It’s your standard line for an informal bukkake session, so I drop my pants and wait my turn along with everyone else. As I stand there, cock exposed, I realize the unfathomable has happened—I’m not even excited.

  Thousands of years ago, Asians created bukkake sessions as a way to garner trust and assert fairness after sealing a business transaction. It showed peace and harmony. Right now, I feel as if I am sealing my business fate by standing in this line. Good thing that it’s common law that another man is not permitted to look another man in the eye during the ceremony. If so, they would see my trepidation as my turn approaches.

  “Are you nervous?” asks the beautiful blonde woman kneeling on the floor staring up at me.

  “Yeah, I’m nervous . . . for you,” I say, as I fake a laugh.

  As I tug on my penis, it feels like I am holding a wet sock. Son of a bitch, not here, not now. This can’t happen. I need to show that mentally I have not been shaken by what has transpired, and I need to do it in impressive fashion. So I have to dig deep. I pull out the mental shovel and go inside my mind grave, also known as the “go-to.”

  Way, way back in the depths of every man’s mind, they have that one go-to night. The one night that was so magical that no matter what horrific sexual situation you’ve gotten yourself into, you can think of this night to finish the job. A man may go to this night a hundred times over the course of his life, depending on what his lifestyle is like. I have never gone there before, but I can’t show weakness in front of these men.

  So I close my eyes and go there, stroking with the precision of the Harvard crew team. My go-to is the night of May 21, 1839, when my dad had finally let me drive the wagon into town by myself for the first time to pick up two sacks of oats for our family. He handed me two loaded shotguns before I left and said, “Watch out for Indians; they’ve been robbing white people.”

  As I rode into town, I was stopped by a hollering group of them, faces painted. Up close, I realized they were all girls, and they were hot as fuck. Without saying a single word, they proceeded to rob me . . . of my virginity. They tied me down inside the back of my wagon and raped me for hours.

  Right around dawn of the following morning as the sun was rising, they gave up. One of them proposed to me when she finished. Three others were weeping as they kissed and washed my feet, calling me Spirit Dick. The last one wiped her face paint off and told me she was white, which wasn’t true. That’s the kind of sexual power I held, even as a boy.

  As I look down at the chick kneeling on the ground in front of me, I hit my stride. Just when I am about to unload a triple-roper, I grab my bloody SJSJ handkerchief from my pocket and squeeze it tightly, screaming out “Freedom!”

  Shivering as if there is a chill in the air, I slowly release the hanky. By the time it hits the ground, my balls are backdrafting up into my body, and I ejac with a force that would baffle seismologists for years. The woman seems to be in shock as I take a moment to admire my masterpiece. Her body now resembles a Jackson Pollock painting. She blinks her eyes and nods in appreciation.

  After I zip up, I nod at the next man, letting him know that I’m safely finished and he can begin. On the way out of the tiny tent, I run into the eldest Schläger. He smiles and extends his hand.

  “Did you have a good time?” he asks.

  “I’m not shaking your hand, dude. We were just touching our dicks.”

  “So? We’re rich, it doesn’t count.”

  “It only doesn’t count if we just completed a business transaction.”

  “You’re right. Let me buy your gold mine. Name your price.”

  “Fuck you. If I sell to you, you’ll be able to control the town.”

  “We already control the town. Now we want everything.”

  “You control the town? That will be the fucking day. You might control this mountain, but definitely not the town. I’m still the candyman to all the toothless children!”

  Forcing a laugh, I seal the top button on my jeans and reattach my sidearms. Although my confidence is shaken, I grab my dick like a man, never flinching. I stare him down with lifeless eyes, as if I have Down’s syndrome.

  “You know, I never did catch your first name,” I calmly say.

  “It’s Sven.”

  “Seven?”

  “No, Sven. No first e—it’s Dutch. Why do you give a shit?”

  “Well, you have to pay the engraver by the letter on your tombstone. If I were you, I’d have your brothers just ask for the numeral. It’ll be cheaper.”

  I whistle for my steed and walk out wi
thout ever breaking eye contact or blinking. Sven screams, “This is just the beginning! We’ll be everywhere soon!”

  As I ride out, I think of how proud I am for pulling off that triple-roper in the bukkake sesh. But now what do I do about not being the richest man I know? I can’t let a bunch of Dutch rednecks take me down. That’s when it suddenly dawns on me—I need to buy up every fucking thing in town. I dig my heels hard into my steed and head straight to the deed office.

  An enormous sense of urgency swells as I ride down Main Street, partially because a full string section is playing in the town square, begging for money. Street musicians are the worst. We get it, you’re poor. Move on. I tie up my steed and walk inside the deed office, where I’m greeted by a long line of the filthiest sons of bitches you can imagine. Picture the people in line at a DMV and the entire front row of defendants at a DUI court combined. Yeah, let that wine breathe for a sec. Plus, showers don’t really exist yet, so all these people stink like ten thousand Mexicans took a shit in their hands.

  The deed office is a place where people of every walk of life are just trying to claim anything they can get their disgusting hands on. Think about it—Alaska doesn’t even exist yet in the 1800s. It is just a cold place where you can fuck bears if you are into that. I could buy the entire state for eighty dollars.

  After thirty seconds, I’m fed up with the line, so I pull out my gun and fire it into the ceiling six times. Everyone hits the floor, and I walk toward the front.

  “I’m Saint James Street James, the richest man in town, and I’m skipping this line.”

  Nobody says shit to me as I walk to the first deed teller, an old man in his seventies with one foot in the grave. He stares at me through a monocle. His name is John Monopoly. This guy is a fucking asshole—even his own family hates him.II