At Night She Cries, While He Rides His Steed

by Ross Patterson

  Boom! A carriage crashes into another carriage at high speed right in front of me. Well, high speed for a fucking carriage. Samantha rolls out of it, laughing hysterically. You’d hardly recognize him. He now wears an ill-fitting suit and has big, fake white teeth, and his burnt hair has managed to grow back in patches. I’m surprised he didn’t go with the karate gi, since I gave him a choice of either/or.

  Here’s what’s been going on the last two years: opium, son. The Great White Dick. Poppy Sinclair. The Witches’ Orgy. The Man with the Twisted Limp. O’Boogie. I have everyone smoking that shit. People became zombies, killing each other in the street. I was rich as fuck, so I didn’t care. Was I still smoking it? You bet I was, because I can handle my shit like a grown man.

  Mayor Van Buren tried in vain to pass legislation to ban opium the year before, but I smoked up all the senators before they went in to discuss it. They never even made it back out of chambers until the next day, and by then, they had totally forgotten about the whole thing. My product got so popular, I ran out for a couple months. I had to take half my Chinamen back to my farm to grow more. My property now has opium fields as far as the eye can see, and my kids all have their own horses, riding around the fields with shotguns protecting my crops.

  Daniel, now sixteen, has grown into quite the man. It was his idea to make all the Chinamen strip buck naked before they harvest the opium every day, so they won’t steal any. They’re only allowed to put their clothes back on at the end of their shift after they spread their butt cheeks and cough for him. That little fucker is ruthless, and I love it. I pretty much just let him do whatever he wants, because he’s fucking awesome.

  Look, I know things aren’t perfect in town right now. I’m not that delusional. People are getting sick of the Chinese, and I get it. Now that some of them have money, they have more freedom, which is not necessarily a good thing. They suck at driving carriages. They laugh quietly to themselves in an annoying way for no reason. They are always solving math problems. I guess that’s just like a hobby to them?

  Probably the most annoying thing, though, is that Samantha won’t stop taking pictures now. The other day we were at a diner for breakfast and he took a picture of his food. He actually ran across the street and grabbed that big-ass camera on the wooden tripod, pulled the curtain over himself, and took a picture of his fucking breakfast in the restaurant. Who does that shit?

  I can’t say anything to him, because he’s still the only one who speaks Chinese and English, and I need a translator for everyone. Since he’s had a little taste of power, he’s also been dipping into the “pale-faced lady,” trying to be like me. Obviously, he can’t handle his shit the way I can, as evidenced by his latest carriage crash. Mayor Van Buren speed-walks across the street, his face red as hell. He points at Samantha and starts screaming.

  “Goddamn it, Saint James, your Chinaman destroyed my carriage!”

  “Just be grateful you weren’t in it. Let’s just take a step back, hold hands, and thank our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.” I hold out my hand sarcastically for him to take. He slaps it away.

  “Don’t you give me your Jesus talk, you atheist!”

  “Look, God is creating water right now.” I point to Samantha, who is now pissing in the middle of the street.

  “This is the second carriage of mine he’s destroyed in the last week. I won’t put up with it anymore! You’ve turned this town into a bunch of goddamn junkies!”

  “As opposed to the respectful, incestuous rednecks you brought into town? And for what? Petty revenge over my old man numbing out your mom? Get over it. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, fuck off, Mayor.”

  “I’m going to get the sheriff this time; we need to have some laws . . .”

  As soon as the words come out of his mouth, we see the sheriff walking down the road minding his own business, when a tweaked-out Schläger brother, foaming at the mouth, runs out of my opium den holding a loaded peacemaker. He’s talking nonsensically, but this time not in an endearing redneck way. The sheriff turns, but it’s too late—blam!—the Schläger shoots him dead, before turning the gun on himself, blowing his own brains out.

  I stand up and applaud as Mayor Van Buren looks on in shock. The fat Chinaman barrels out into the street again and grabs each of them one by one, throwing them over each shoulder. He laughs as he passes back by us.

  “Hogs eat goo’ today,” he says with a smile.

  I stop him and grab the sheriff’s badge off his shirt and pin it to my suit. It looks nice on me, like it was meant to be. Mayor Van Buren shakes his head in disgust.

  “You wanted law, you got law. I will protect and serve fine opium to the people!”

  “You listen here, Saint James, I’m going to send a telegram for my father, the former president. He’ll get the marshals out here!”

  I stand up and quick-draw my gun, pressing it in his face. “You get that one-term slapdick father of yours down here, and all the fucking marshals you like. I own this fucking town now, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it. Isn’t that right, Sam?”

  Sam unleashes ten Chinese throwing stars into the wagon wheels of the mayor’s busted-up carriage. The mayor looks at me, befuddled.

  “No, the other thing, Sam.”

  Sam nods and pulls out a bottle of Goldschläger and smashes it against the side of the carriage. I then take a match, strike it off the sheriff’s badge on my chest, and flick it on top of it. The entire carriage becomes engulfed in flames and immediately burns to the ground in a matter of seconds.

  “Man, that was really fucking fast. I was not expecting that. That shit is strong,” I note.

  “You will rue the day you ever messed with me!”

  I point over at Sam and say, “Just because he can’t pronounce the word ‘rule,’ there’s no need to inflict your racist pronunciation on him.”

  “No, I said ‘rue,’ which means to regret—forget it!”

  Van Buren is so angry at this moment that he can’t even speak. As he marches away, I walk over to his carriage to light a cigarette off a small remaining flame and I wonder if I’ve taken it too far. Maybe I’ve pressed my luck a little. That thought quickly vanishes and I remember looking down at my badge, thinking how cool it would be if someone blew me as the new sheriff. From behind a man taps my shoulder.

  “How cool would it be if someone blew you as the new sheriff?”

  “I was just—

  “Thinking that? I know.”

  I turn and see the gypsy woman standing behind me, dressed in the sheriff’s clothes that he just died in moments ago. His fresh blood is still on the shirt. She has also somehow shaved his mustache off and glued it to her face again.

  Pulling out her gun, she whispers, “Come on, sheriff to sheriff, let’s screw.”

  Why that seems right, I will never know. I pull her inside St. James Place, and that’s what we do. We screw. Hard. In front of everyone. It creeps out a lot of people, and I lose a lot of customers and friends over it. That’s what power does to you; it makes you think it’s acceptable to fuck a woman dressed as a dude in front of other dudes. In reality, you need to keep that shit behind closed doors. I don’t really give a shit which way you swing, that’s just a general rule of thumb in a whorehouse if there’s any cosplay involved.

  This moment of carelessness is the beginning of the end for me. My rule, or rue, over the town has gotten too reckless. Things remain peaceful for a few days after I light the mayor’s carriage on fire. I am an awesome sheriff, and there is hardly any crime. Seriously. Everyone is so afraid of pissing me off because they don’t want me to blacklist them from my opium den that there isn’t one single crime committed. Also, I am so high most of the time that I’m not even sure what really constitutes a real crime . . . until it happens to me.

  About a week passes, and I’m sitting out in front of St. James Place reciting haiku and limericks, enjoying the fine smells of squirrel di wafting through the streets, when
suddenly I hear collective screams from the townspeople. I stand up and see a man riding down Main Street toward me at a breakneck speed, with what appears to be a body dragging behind his horse. The man stops in front of me and flashes some sort of badge. It looks different from mine.

  “Are you Saint James Street James?”

  “I am Sheriff Street James, yes. Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m Marshal Mathers of the eighty-sixth district of the United States. I served under President Van Buren.”

  “Just say you were a bottom; you don’t have to say you served under him.”

  He looks at me, confused. “This is a message from Mayor Van Buren: ‘Your kid is dead. This is him.’ ”

  I look down at the body, but it’s almost unrecognizable. At closer glance, this could be anyone; it might not even be a human, that’s how mangled it is at this point. I sit back down and continue my limericks aloud: “There was an old man from Peru.”

  Marshal Mathers becomes enraged. “This is your son, man. That we killed.”

  “If that’s really one of my sons, what’s his name?”

  “Steve.”

  “Nope. I don’t have a kid named Steve. Sorry, friend.”

  “He said you’d say that. So he told me to say ‘Patrick.’ ”

  Upon hearing this, I look down closer at the body, and that’s when it sets in. It really is him.

  “You motherfucker!” I draw my gun and shoot him in the chest, knocking him off his horse.

  He hits the ground groaning in pain, trying to reach for his gun, but he can’t. I stand over him, and his eyes widen as he says, “You don’t shoot the messenger!”

  “I just fucking did.”

  I unload the rest of my pistol into him. Breathing heavily and unable to speak, he bleeds out, dying in front of me. Out of my peripheral vision, I see another man on a horse riding in at the same speed. I quick-draw my other gun, but it’s only Samantha. He looks completely distraught when he pulls up in front of me. As he gets closer, visible tears are streaming down his face.

  “Sam, are you crying? What the fuck, bro?”

  “Sorry, boss. They’re dead. All of them are dead.”

  “Yeah, I know. Apparently Steve and Patrick are the same person.”

  “No, they set a fire. Everyone from the farm is dead. My family . . . and yours,” Samantha wails, falling to his knees.

  Have you ever gotten so angry that you start uncontrollably shaking and piss your pants? Typically it only happens to blind people when you fuck with their dogs, but it happens to me at this moment. I stand there frozen, violently shaking internally. After a long, steady release of urine, I scream toward the heavens and am finally able to concentrate. It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience, except this time I am inside myself as I watch myself from the outside. Sorry, I think that is the exact definition of an “out-of-body experience.”

  Adrenaline kicks in, and I pick Sam up by his belt loop, carrying him over to my steed. He’s a fucking mess, and I know he can’t ride in his condition. I hold him tightly against my horse and ride us home.

  As we make our way through the forest, I can see fresh smoke billowing in the air from the grounds of my estate. Any doubts that Samantha is just really fucked up on opium and imagined both of our families burning in a fire are quickly erased. When we hit the edge of the tree line, my steed halts just in front of the slightly smoking grass where the fire has finally flamed out. As I survey the land, everything is gone. Everything.

  The opium fields: burned up. The rice paddies: nuked. My wife’s garden: gonzo. My stables: smoldering ashes. The house: black char. My entire property looks like the inside of a wood-burning stove. I hop down with Samantha to see if there are any survivors.

  My steed stays on the hill as we walk on foot through the charred ashes of the rice paddies. All that remain are burned, nude bodies serving as mere blackened grave sites amidst the landscape. Samantha walks over to their remains, trying to identify his relatives. Dental records don’t exist yet, not that they would help the Chinese, obviously. Samantha hovers over a couple bodies and begins crying again. I can tell that he wants to be alone, so I leave him there to mourn and be with his people.

  Walking back toward the house on my own, I pass by the stable, which is completely burned to the ground as well. The only thing I can make out is a large, black figure that is clearly Daniel’s horse, which can mean only one thing: Daniel was home and probably didn’t make it out alive. Goddamn it.

  The house itself is almost entirely gone. A few smoldering boards from the foundation are all that is left. I can’t even make out if there are bodies in the remains, because the house is so fucking massive. It has been reduced to a giant pile of used firewood, and it’s clear everyone is dead. My entire family has now left this earth.

  Before getting emotional, I peer over my shoulder to see if Sam is looking in my direction. When I see him curled up in the fetal position, wailing in the distance, I know I’m safe. If you do one thing in this life, never let another man see you cry. Ever. Just to be cautious, I turn my head and let out one solemn tear. The only tear of sorrow I will shed in my entire life. That’s right: uno. One. Powerful. Motherfucking. Tear. In slow motion that PMT rolls off my cheek, extinguishing a tiny remaining flame on one of the smoldering boards beneath my feet. Deep down, I needed that tear to escape, so it wouldn’t extinguish my fire within. Instead, I use that fire and turn it into white-hot, fuck-all revenge.

  Seeing death this close really fucks people up on the inside . . . but not me. I know seeing some shit like this will harden me to anything I will ever see the rest of my life. This is the exact moment where I achieve old-man strength within.

  My quiet inner rage is interrupted when I hear Samantha screaming for me. In the distance, I can see four US Marshals riding up to my property on horseback. I calmly walk toward them, knowing they will have to dismount their horses at the exact same place we did once they reach the charred ground.

  “Saint James Street James, we have a warrant for your arrest. It’s from the president,” one of them says in a stern voice.

  “For what?” I ask, stone-faced.

  “Tax evasion. You did not pay the duty tax on your opium.”

  “When the fuck did that become a law?”

  “1840, sir.”

  “Is that so? Well, as you can see I have no more opium; therefore there is nothing to tax. My fields mysteriously burned down.”

  “That’s a shame. I hear that stuff is real flammable.”

  “Yeah. Apparently, people are too. We lost about sixty to seventy humans in the fire as well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. My condolences. Anyway, I got a telegram from Mayor Van Buren that says you’ve been running an opium den in town for the last two years, so you’re going to need to pay up on that. The federal government will sort it out with you once we extradite you back to Washington.”

  “Sounds good. My condolences to you as well, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “On your impending deaths.”

  Full-on hysterical blindness has kicked in, and I become the ruthless motherfucker I was born to be. I quick-draw both pistols and blow all four marshals away. Standing over them, I calmly reload and fire two more rounds into each of them. Samantha stares at me as I walk over to my steed.

  “Where are you going, boss?”

  “There’s only one person in this town who has the capability to send a telegram, and I’m going to pay him a visit.”

  “I can’t leave them like this, I have to bury the bodies. It’s a Chinese tradition.”

  “Luckily, I believe in cremation, so I’m all set. I’ll be back to get you in a couple hours. Comb through these fields and see if you can scare up a couple unburned poppies for one last opium sesh. I’m going to need it after what I’m about to do.”

  He nods at me as I ride off . . . straight to fucking Ron’s house. That gimpy motherfucker is the only one with
a printing press capable of sending that telegram. I can’t believe that son of a bitch sold me out again. Even my steed senses my anger, and this time, there’s no need to dig my heels in; he’s already at top speed.

  As I near his house, I can see Ron watering his garden, enjoying his afternoon without a care in the world. That all changes the instant he hears my horse bearing down on him as we gallop closer. His eyes fill with panic, and he throws down his water bucket, running into his house as fast as he can, locking the doors behind him. My steed doesn’t even attempt to stop as we arrive at the house. Instead he rides as close as he can to it and I jump off, crashing through the window, tackling Ron to the ground inside his own living room. He screams like the scared woman he is as I rip the gun out of his holster and begin to beat him with it.

  Sheila comes running in from the bedroom; she’s aged well, actually. To my surprise, she’s also kind of dressed up, as if she has been expecting me to come over. I put Ron’s gun to his head and squeeze the trigger. Click. Nothing. I knew it still wasn’t loaded, but I wanted Sheila to know that Ron has been running around town holding a gun with no bullets in it.

  At this point, I want to strip away any last bit of dignity and manhood that Ron is holding on to. I pick him up by his toupee, ripping it off his head. He screams as he flies backward into the kitchen. Looking down at the hairpiece, I can see yarn and chunks of his own skin still in it. He grabs his bleeding scalp.

  “What the fuck? Did you sew this into your head, Ron?”

  “Yes! I wanted—”

  “To be like me. I know. Everyone does. Why did you send the fucking telegram, Ron? My entire family is dead!” I draw both my guns.

  “Not your entire family,” an unfamiliar voice says behind me.