Ghost Heart

by Weston Ochse

  But Matt sure didn’t feel much like Perseus. The shadows hugging the man’s wicked features and glistening eyes promised imminent danger. Pulling to a stop, the biker’s mouth opened and a low, mean laugh spilled out.

  “Well,” he sneered. “Look what we have here!”

  The three other bikers pulled alongside Bovine Mack, catching Matt inside a semi-circle. Their headlights pinned Matt and Jacket’s motorcycle to the night. Two of them were obviously looking for trouble. The third, the smallest of the three and dressed in full leathers, looked worried. He was the one who’d warned Bovine Mack at the Buffalo Chip.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this, Bo.”

  “Shut up, Alvin,” hissed Bovine Mack. To Matt he said, “Is that your bike, kid?”

  Matt stared at one after the other. His mouth was very dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He doubted he could speak, but he had to say it was his or they’d take it. They might take it anyway.

  Finally Matt nodded, wondering where the heck Jacket had gotten to.

  “Pretty big bike for such a little kid,” said one of the bikers.

  “I don’t think it’s his,” said the other.

  “Couldn’t even reach the clutch.”

  “I—I’m not a little kid,” Matt stuttered.

  “Maybe he found it,” said one of the bikers, dismounting his own motorcycle. He approached Jacket’s Harley-Davidson.

  “It’s definitely a Harley. Think it’s a ’54 or ’55.” This guy peered at the hog admiringly. “Man, look at that engine. This thing’s a work of art.” Bovine leaned over his handlebars and gazed enviously at the motorcycle.

  “Come on,” said the one called Alvin. “We should be going.”

  “Ain’t got that giant or that dog to protect you now, do you?”

  Bovine Mack flipped down the kickstand and climbed off his motorcycle.

  Matt felt tears stinging his eyes.

  “No,” Jacket said from somewhere behind the four bikers. “But he has me.”

  One of the bikers started to turn. “Who—”

  “Don’t turn around,” Jacket snapped. “I got the twin barrels of my sawed-off aimed at you and it will take nothing for me to pull the trigger.”

  Bovine Mack stared into Matt’s face and leered. “You’ll hit the boy.”

  “Not with your lard butt in the way.”

  Bovine Mack’s grin vanished. “Why, I oughta—”

  “What?” challenged Jacket. “Die? I can make that happen. One thing’s for sure, you ain’t gonna rustle my bike. No office-boy wanna-be biker is gonna ride her, no sir. Over my dead body.”

  Hatred etched across Bovine Mack’s features. “That will be arranged,” he hissed.

  “Whatever,” Jacket said. He sounded bored. “Now just drive off the way you came. You turn around and you’re hamburger. Won’t be the first time I’ve had to bury a body.”

  Cursing under their breath, the four started their engines and rolled slowly out of the gravel area and back onto the road. With complaining gears, they shot down the road, indignation in the hunch of their shoulders.

  When the sound of their engines had faded to nothing but faraway echoes, Jacket finally strode back into the clearing. In his hand was a stout branch that he tossed aside. “There,” he said smugly. “Ready to go?”

  “What?” Matt stared at him. “Aren’t you worried?”

  “Naw. People are always trying to steal my ride. Bought it before I went off to war and it’s always been in immaculate condition. A guy gets used to a certain amount of envy.”

  “Oh.” Matt couldn’t think of anything more to say.

  Jacket climbed onto the Harley and started the engine, and Matt climbed on behind him. He was pretty sure that they hadn’t seen the last of Bovine Mack. The man was pretty mad.

  And he’d used the word will instead of can when he’d said that will be arranged.

  XIII

  DEADWOOD

  Founded in 1876 during the gold rush, Deadwood reclined comfortably between two lush, heavily-treed ridges. Home to many of the Wild West’s more stolid legends, the old facades of dusty floors and dry wood had long been replaced by neon and plastic.

  Although it was nearly ten o’clock, the streets of Deadwood were still littered with the party-colored pastels of tourists. Oranges and pinks and greens and yellows striped and polka-dotted up thick legs and across sallow chests as insurance agents, salesmen, lawyers and ladies tried to blend with the west. The more ambitious wore twentieth-century cowboy dud replicas like red, white and blue leather fringe vests that had never seen the dew of an early morning field or the stench of a thousand head of cattle after dinner. Cowboy hats of all shapes and sizes bobbed along the board walks, while here and there blinking lights like those found on bars or all night diners festooned the extra-wide brims.

  The pudgy hands of bleary-eyed children gripped cotton candy, salt-water taffy or triple-decker pistachio ice cream cones as they were dragged from one “authentic” Wild West Casino—Site of This Gunfight and That Knife Battle Where You Too Can Be A Lean Mean Pistol-toting Machine!—to another. Brightly lit windows displayed Black Hills Gold jewelry while dream catchers spliced with four-pound-test fishing line spun lazily on fan-pushed breezes. Tacky little statues, plates and T-shirts surrounded neon-colored rabbit’s-foot key chains, hats, cap guns and knee-high wooden replica cigar-store Indians. “Bear” rugs made from the dyed fur of unlucky rabbits and a thousand other items tempted shoppers looking for reminders of the wonderfulgreathappy time one and all had in the small mountain town of Deadwood.

  Amidst it all several bikers, modern-day cowboys dressed in serviceable leathers, sneered at the collage of cellulose and pallid skin. Locals stared hard at the ground, reminding themselves that the money generated by the casinos and the tourists more than made up for the embarrassment of a giggling rhinestone cowboy in Calvin Klein jeans and orange-and-silver cowboy boots.

  Matt and Jacket were stunned by the nightlife. Finally Jacket nudged the boy and directed his attention to the space of empty boardwalk across the street. “There he be.”

  Beneath a small historic sign that read Site of the Original Number 10 Saloon and the Murder of Wild Bill Hickok was a shimmer of unearthly light. As they watched, a pasty-faced woman in a red-and-white polka-dotted halter top and bursting Capri pants stepped blissfully through the shimmer, then shuddered from her shoulders to her feet. She grimaced and turned to see what had caused the awful sensation. But there was nothing but the other tourists and blinking lights along the wooden-planked sidewalk, so she shook her head and continued toward the Oyster Bay Bar and Grill, a decidedly non-Western tourist joint with a gaudy flashing sign.

  Matt squinted and tried to make out what was in the light, but all he could see was a vaguely human-shaped shimmer. It was certainly nothing to identify the gauzy being as the ghost of Wild Bill Hickok. “That? Is that him?”

  Jacket, who had snagged a Coca-Cola from a passing vendor, sipped slowly from the sweaty can and savored the harsh pops of carbonation. He nodded.

  “Well, he sure ain’t much,” Matt declared knowingly. His mouth twisted into a smear of disapproval, but underneath it was a hint of disappointment.

  Jacket snorted Coke and grinned. “Look closer. Ghosts are a different kind of Guardian Spirit. They haunt a specific place, not people. They want to be seen, but have to rely on a certain curiosity.”

  Matt regarded Jacket doubtfully, but returned his attention to the shimmer and concentrated. Remembering a book photo he’d once seen of the long-dead gunfighter, he tried to form the image in his mind: black hat, black knee-length coat, black pants, black cowboy boots. He remembered two pearl-handled Peacemakers hanging rakishly at the man’s hips, and a large mustache hiding a mouth that could be frowning or smiling—no one knew. With the image rolling in his memory, he then tried to superimpose it over the shimmering light.

  Slowly, something began to solidify in his vision. But its edges
didn’t have the clean lines of a body. Instead, its boundary was ragged, as if the man had been ripped from something larger. As Matt watched, the shimmer darkened and, finally, Wild Bill Hickok became a blurry reality. Small details like buttons, pocket edges and the pearly-grips of the pistols remained slightly out of focus, as if they were behind a glaze. When the ghost turned, smears of light marked his trails like fleeting memories of where he’d once been.

  Hickok’s skin was pale and clear, and Matt could clearly see objects through it. The gunfighter’s boots and clothes were darker but not quite black, as if they remembered they should have been but weren’t quite able to pull it off. unable to attain their past form.

  “See him now?”

  “Yes,” Matt said. His answer was one long, wondrous sigh. For several long seconds he watched as the ghost of the Wild West legend strutted back and forth across the spot of his death. The tails of his knee-length jacket whipped every time Wild Bill turned. Every once in a while, he’d snatch out a pistol in a bright trail of light, sight down the barrel and pull the trigger. The bullet would shoot away, streaking white like a laser beam until its line finally dissolved and fell to the ground like fairy dust. Sometimes a bullet would even pierce the forehead of a tourist, only to keep going toward the horizon. It was after the successful gunning-down of a slouched grandpa with a road-kill toupee that the ghost raised the barrel to his lips and blew. And as he did so, he flicked his gaze to where Matt stood grinning at his antics.

  His grin slid into a tight line. Holstering his pistol, he headed toward where Matt stood. He glided rather than walked, moving with blazing speed, as if time were standing still. Each sliding step covered a dozen feet in a second. Time-step. Glide. Time-step. Glide.

  Then the ghost was hovering over Matt. He sneered beneath sad blue eyes, the only sign of color beyond the sepia-toned blood that forever stained his once-white shirt. Four holes were centered in his chest, proof of the coward’s bullets that had taken him down.

  “You see me,” the ghost of Wild Bill hissed at him. He leaned farther over Matt until the edges of his mustache brushed the boy’s head. Where they touched felt like ice and Matt automatically cowered beneath the ghost’s interest. Suddenly he didn’t like Wild Bill all that much.

  “Yes, we do,” Jacket said with a scowl. “You wanna leave the kid alone,” he suggested. “If you aim to squabble, you can pick on someone your own size.”

  Wild Bill’s head snapped around. Hovering over Matt like he was, the twist of his neck made the ghost seem almost birdlike. His blue eyes narrowed even more. “You’re my size, aren’t you?”

  “That I am.”

  Wild Bill straightened and started to step toward Jacket. Then he paused, confusion bleeding through his meanness. “What are you?” he demanded. “You’re not like the rest of them.” He made the last word sound acidic. “You’re not quite right.”

  “I wouldn’t be talking if I was you,” Jacket retorted. “At least I ain’t got any perforations.”

  Matt blinked. “What’s a perforation?”

  Wild Bill glanced at Matt, and this time a little playfulness crept into his practiced frown. “These,” he said. Wild Bill stuck four fingers into the holes in his chest and grimaced as they disappeared up to the second knuckles. When he pulled them back out, they brought a little bit of light with them.

  “Those are bullet holes,” Matt said in awe.

  “Got a brainy one here,” said Wild Bill. He grinned and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops.

  “A regular Einstein,” Jacket said.

  “Who?” Wild Bill stared perplexed at Jacket.

  Before Jacket could answer, Matt, who’d lost his earlier fear, reached out and poked a finger into one of the bullet holes. “Do they hurt?”

  “Hey!” Wild Bill backed up and rubbed at his chest. “You can’t just go around sticking your fingers in ghost holes. No, sirree! That just isn’t done. Anyway, the only thing that hurts is my feelings. I still can’t believe some wet-behind-the-ears sissy-boy claim jumper done got the jump on me.”

  Matt grinned and reached for one of the ghost’s pistols, but Wild Bill dodged to the side, then instantly time-stepped a dozen feet away.

  “Better watch that kid,” he said to Jacket. When Jacket only raised an eyebrow, Wild Bill looked at Matt. “How come a little boy like you can see little old dead me, anyway?”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Matt replied promptly.

  “I ain’t afraid of you, neither. Now we’re even.”

  “Can I play with your gun?”

  Wild Bill glared at Matt in exasperation. “No, you can’t play with my gun. Guns are dangerous. They kill people, you know.” He pointed at the holes in his chest, then turned so Matt could see the four matching ones in his back where they’d entered.

  “Your gun doesn’t kill,” Matt argued. “I saw you shooting the tourists.”

  “Tourists need shooting,” Wild Bill said grumpily. “That’s for darned sure.”

  A man and a woman wobbled between Matt and Wild Bill. They were so close that Matt was forced to step back and almost fell. “Drunken tourists,” growled the ghost. He swept forward and pinched the wide butt of the woman.

  She shrieked and leaped into the air. When she landed, Matt could feel the boards beneath him shake. Her hands rubbed hard at the sore spot, then she spun and slapped the man beside her full across the face before stomping off toward the Silverado Casino.

  “Honeeey!” cried her companion, less wobbly and now woe-stricken. “What’d you do that for?” His whining voice was soon lost amid the clamor of slot machine bells and the laughter of the crowd.

  “There,” Wild Bill said with open satisfaction. “That’ll teach them.”

  Matt was giggling so hard it took several long seconds for him to catch his breath. When he was finally able to talk, he gave Wild Bill a wide smile. “I wish I could do that.”

  “No you don’t,” Jacket said. His voice was tight enough to make Matt give him a worried glance.

  “Why not?” Wild Bill answered for him. “Cause you’d have to be dead.”

  ««—»»

  Exhaustion and starvation were winning the battle over Matt, and Jacket couldn’t ignore the rumbling of the boy’s small tummy any longer. After going over his choices, Jacket led Matt to a sidewalk table in front of Mustang Sally’s, the stainless steel replica of a 1950s diner that promised in pink blinking letters to have the Loosest Slots and Burgers in Deadwood.

  Sitting at the table, Matt had wondered what a loose burger was as he imagined slippery lettuce and fleet-footed pickles zigzagging across the wet surface of his hunger. Once the grinning waitress placed the half-pound burger on the table, the aroma of sizzled beef and BBQ sauce enveloped him in a friendly cloud of picnic memories and he decided he really didn’t care. He grasped the immense burger firmly in his hands and bit deeply. Loose or tight, what did it matter when a burger tasted as good as this one? He was soaking the last of his French fries in catsup when a deep voice spoke over his shoulder. “Where are your parents, son?”

  “In the restaurant playing the slots,” he said. The lie he’d practiced with Jacket came easy.

  “I don’t think so,” said the voice.

  Matt turned in his chair. Through the window he could see Jacket across the street in the alley between Tin Can and Caesars, where he stood and argued with the ghost of Wild Bill. Only the occasional passerby glanced into the alley, probably thinking that Jacket was just another drunk talking to himself in the gloom. It was certainly a better place to converse with the invisible than the middle of the street.

  But that wasn’t Matt’s problem.

  Matt’s problem was right in front of him in the form of a very tall and very large police officer dressed in tan and black leather. The pistol at his hip was real and kind of frightening—not that Matt was a criminal, but his mother and father had most likely already been in touch with the police. The challenge of getting away from
this policeman without the officer realizing that Matt had run away from home was going to be one of his biggest yet.

  The policeman leaned in close, and surprisingly his breath smelled of pizza and beer. His face was wide and covered with the small scars, like the ones Matt’s cousin Frank had because of acne. His left eye was kind of droopy, like it belonged on another person. Matt tried not to stare, but couldn’t keep his gaze off it.

  “You’re that kid from Rapid City,” the policeman said in a tone that invited no arguing.

  His burger forgotten, Matt tried anyway. “I—I’m not—”

  The policeman’s hand landed possessively on Matt’s shoulder. “It’s okay, son. You’re safe now.” Keeping one hand on Matt’s shoulder, he reached out and pulled a plastic chair up to where he could sit beside him. He took his cowboy hat off, wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, then placed the hat back on his head. “I can’t believe I actually found you.” His right eye widened in excitement, which made the other eyes seemed all the more odd. “I mean, when the word came down the wire that there was a missing kid, I said to myself, Andy, where would you go, if you were lost and needed a place to go?”

  Matt shook himself from the hypnotic effect of the droopy eye, which he’d already silently started calling El Droopo.

  “I thought of Mount Rushmore and Reptile Gardens and even the Badlands. And then it hit me.”

  In the eye? Matt wondered.

  “Where would any fun-loving boy come to when in need?”

  Matt glanced at the sign and then back at El Droopo. To the home of the loose burger?

  The officer nodded smugly. “Yep, to Deadwood. Now where are they? You can tell me.”

  “Where are who?”

  “The people who took you.”

  Matt stared across the street to where Jacket was still talking to Wild Bill. “Nobody took me, mister. I ran away from home.”

  “Nice try, son. I admire your bravery, but now’s not the time. Things may get dangerous here any moment.” The policeman unbuttoned the safety on his holster and placed his hand eagerly on the grip of the pistol. “Yep, at any moment.”