Peaceable Kingdom

by Jack Ketchum

“You are foolish. Most foolish man I ever met.”

  “Who was it planned this damn robbery? Who was it got us all shot up? I don’t recall doin’ it nor Faro Bill nor Chunk neither.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Faro Bill, “we can resolve this. Heads Chunk spoke or tails he didn’t.” He produced an old smooth featureless silver dollar.

  “Faro Bill,” said Joe, “I take it back and I want to apologize to the Kid here. You are the most foolish man I ever met bar none. You want to gamble on the way the wind blows.”

  “Done that too.”

  “I don’t doubt ya.”

  He cracked some scrub and fed it to the flames, knelt and cracked some more.

  “You want to know what I know about luck? Real bad luck?”

  “Sure.” Faro Bill passed him the bottle. He drank it down to near-empty, settled down crosslegged and passed it to the Kid.

  “Happened to me years ago when I was just a boy, I’d just come west. I was sittin’ in Tuttle’s Saloon in Newton, Kansas one night and of course we had us a game on. I didn’t rightly know the players. I was new to town and lookin’ for cattlework though not too hard as yet, arrived as I was just the day before. But these boys were a good enough bunch, I could tell that. Four of us. Lotta laughin’. Nothin’ serious. We’re drinkin’ Snakehead Whiskey, I remember. You ever had a taste?”

  “Not that I recall,” said Faro Bill.

  “Six rattlesnake-heads to the barrell. Tastes like the Devil stirred it with his own boot. Anyhow we’re playin’ and I’m losin’ when in walks this mean-looking dirty little fella, his shirt all stained with tobacco juice, Colt on his hip, hat looks like it’s been chewed by bears. Walks over to the bar which I’m facin’ thank the lord and orders a drink and drinks it and then another and then turns and eyes the room.

  “Other fellas I’m playing with don’t appear to notice this boy at all, they’re busy with the cards. Only me and that’s just ’cause I’m facing him. So that when he orders and downs that third one I’m the only one sees what he’s gonna do, I can see it plain in his eyes way before he draws and takes his stance and by the time he starts firing at our table I’m under it, trying to get my own gun off my hip but I’m just a kid myself, I ain’t no pistolero, and by the time I’ve got it out he’s shot two of the players in that game and the third, his chair’s gone over with him in it and he’s scramblin’ across the floor toward the door.

  “Fella looks at me and I know my day’s arrived. Not even time to push over the table for cover and he’s ready to fire and I’m still fumblin’ around down there and the only thing that saved my ass that day was the bartender and the shotgun behind the bar, I’m tellin’ you. Blew that little fella halfway across the room. I had pieces of that kid in my hair, boys. And I can smell the stink of him to this day.”

  He piled three logs on the fire. They immediately began to smoke.

  “Mise’ble excuse for hardwood,” he said.

  “I don’t follow you,” said Bill. “What’s that got to do with luck?”

  “Gettin’ to that. When things was quiet again we walked over and had a look at him, those of us who could walk. He’d shot two of the boys at my table dead, we never did know why. Anyhow the barkeep who’s name was Brocius turned this fella over and you could have seen daylight through the hole in his chest and somebody said, that’s Little Dick West, and somebody else said it couldn’t be, Little Dick West was shot dead in Witchita more’n a year ago. But the first fella, he insisted, said he knew Little Dick by sight, said that boy was bad luck wherever he went and that he’d personally managed to steer clear of him plenty of times, in Abilene, in Dodge, in Tombstone. He’d seen him shoot a man like a yella dog on the streets of Tombstone.

  “The second gent, he insisted too. Little Dick West was shot over a year ago in a Witchita whorehouse, he said. He knew it for a fact and there were other boys in the saloon who said they’d heard the same now that you mention it. Little Dick took two in the chest in Witchita. One even knew the name of the fella who shot him, McLoughlin I think it was, a farmer. Whose house burned down ’bout a month later. With McLoughlin and his wife and kids in it.

  “Never could resolve that argument at the time. But it was Brocius the barkeep who killed him so that it was Brocius along with the sheriff who dragged him out to the street to wait on the mortician. Dead man’s heavier than you’d think and Brocius had some weight on him and by the time he’s through he’s puffin’. Now, Tuttles’ Saloon has three stairs from the porch to the street, just three. And Brocius is on the second stair when his leg slips out from under him and then next thing you know he’s lying across them stairs with his feet pointin’ east and his head turned ’round on his neck in a westerly direction.”

  “Dead?” said the Kid.

  “Dead,” said Joe.

  “That’s pretty bad luck, all right,” said Faro Bill.

  “I ain’t finished yet. Couple years later I’m riding into Abilene one evenin’. Naturally I’ve forgot all about what happened at Tuttles’ Saloon by then and I’ve had a few pulls on the Tangleleg along the trail from the Circle P to town so I’m not payin’ much attention and it’s only when I’m hitching up to the rail that I notice ain’t nobody on the street but me and two other fellas squared off maybe twenty yards away. And before I can even duck for cover they’re drawn and firing ’till both their guns are empty and I can smell gunsmoke all the hell over where I am and there ain’t but one man standing.

  “Townsfolk start appearin’ like rats out of a burnin’ barn, crowding ’round this big heavy fella standing in the street reloading his pistol calm as you please, one hellova target and not a scratch on him, and this little fella bleeding into the dust, dead as dead can be. They go over and somebody says, I’ll be goddamned! that’s Little Dick West! and somebody else says, nah, they buried that backshootin’ back-stabbin’ sonovabitch Little Dick West over in Witchita some few years back and soon there’s an argument goin’ on that sounds awful familiar to me. So I walk over for a look. You say somethin’, Chunk?”

  “That time I heard it too,” said Faro Bill.

  “Me too,” said the Kid. “Coulda been one of the horses snortin’, though.”

  “Ain’t the horses you fool,” said Canary Joe. “Sounded like ‘I-ill’.”

  “He sure as hell is that,” said the Kid.

  “Go on with the story,” said Faro Bill.

  “Let’s have some more of that Tangleleg, Kid.”

  “Hell, it’s all gone, Joe.”

  “You got another bottle in your saddlebag, Kid. I saw you put it there.”

  “Dammit, Joe. I was savin’ that for trail-whiskey.”

  “Won’t be no trail for you, you don’t find me that bottle.”

  The Kid stared hard across the fire at him a moment as though considering him serious or not serious and then rose heavily and unsteadily to his feet and disappeared into the dark and they could hear the horses’ hooves scuff and paw the ground at this disturbance to their slumber. Canary Joe piled scrub and the last three logs on the fire and waved away the billowed smoke. Faro Bill Brody rolled and lit his Durham. When the Kid returned he had the bottle open and drank once long and defiantly before sitting down again. He passed the bottle to Joe and settled in.

  “So as I was sayin’, I go for a look.”

  “Was it Little Dick?” asked the Kid.

  “Hard for me to say at the time, Kid. Though later I did develop an opinion. Tobacco stains on his shirt were right. Chewed-up-lookin’ hat was right. ’Bout the right height and weight. Problem was there was a ball in his right eye and another in his cheek some few inches down that played all hell with his good looks. He was dirty, though, even before he hit the street. That you could tell.

  “Anyhow, the crowd’s still standin’ there arguin’ ’bout is he or isn’t he but me, I need a drink. Wouldn’t you fellas? I maybe seen Little Dick West shot dead in Newton, Kansas and now I’m maybe seeing him shot all over again. Kind of t
hing unnerves a man. So I head for the saloon. I’m just stepping through the doors when I hear another shot and turn and look and there’s the crowd movin’ away in little waves like when you toss a pebble into a gone-still pond and at the center of this partic’lar pond’s the shooter, the big fella, and he’s on his knees. And then I watch him fall and then he’s squirmin’ face down in the dirt.”

  He took another pull from the bottle and passed it to Faro Bill.

  “What happened?” said the Kid.

  “Shot his goddamn balls off,” said Canary Joe. “Holstering up his Remington Model Three. Don’t know how in hell he done it but he managed. Few hours later, word in the saloon was he’d died from loss of blood.”

  “Hot damn,” said the Kid. “That’s some yarn all right. You want to pass me that bottle, Bill?”

  “Ain’t over yet,” said Joe. “Not quite. Six months, maybe seven months later I’m in Witchita, on my way to nowhere in partic’lar, just driftin’ through. There’s a noose back in Montana with my name on it but I ain’t worried. I’m in Rowdy Joe Lowe’s dance hall, drinkin’ and eyein’ the ladies, thinking about a little recreational expenditure that night if y’know what I mean. Now, ’member I said Little Dick West was suppos’d to’ve been shot dead in Witchita?

  “The first time,” said the Kid.

  “That we know of,” said Faro Bill.

  “Shot by a farmer whose place burned ’bout a month later, with him in it. See where I’m goin’ on this?” said Canary Joe.

  “I think so,” said Faro Bill. “You’re going to tell us you’re in there eyeing the ladies when in walks . . .”

  “When in walks Little Dick West. That’s right. Stands directly beside me at the bar and orders whiskey, nice as you please. And this time I’m sure. I’m damn sure. There ain’t no ball in his cheek or his eyeball this time. He’s so close I can smell him and he don’t smell good. It’s the same damn hat and the same damn tobacco juice all over his shirt and the same damn Colt he pulled in Newton.

  “I guess the folks in Witchita got pretty short memories as these things go because nobody even bats an eye seein’ him in there. The barkeep serves him, the drinkers keep drinking—hell, a couple of the ladies even give him a look by way of well, maybe. But me, I’ve seen him a bit more recently so to speak and I guess my memory’s a little bit better so I pay up for that last one and get the hell out of there fast as I can, because I know for plain honest fact that Little Dick West is the unluckiest man who ever walked the Lord’s green earth and that’s a certainty.”

  A wind had come up from the west. The night was colder now those last few hours before dawn and the men drank silently a pull apiece and warmed their hands by the fire and the Kid shook his head thinking about luck and Little Dick West while Faro Bill rolled yet another Durham and lit it with a twig aflame. The horses snorted, chilled in sleep.

  “We better get us some rest, boys,” said Canary Joe. “Long way to ride yet tomorrow. I’ll gather us up some more of that mise’ble firewood I guess, get us through to morning.”

  He rose to his feet and stepped slowly into the waiting dark.

  “You watch out for Little Dick West, now,” said Faro Bill laughing and it was then that they heard the echo of his words from the mouth of Chunk Herbert dying against the juniper tree, clear this time and no mistaking them, not I-ill or Lily but Li’l Dick West, I shot Li’l Dick West in Dodge City, Kansas and the fusillade seemed to come from everywhere at once and ended Chunk’s luck and their own along with it for good and ever.

  The Haunt

  I found the place just off East Sunset, only three blocks from the sea, and I got it for a song.

  Lauderdale had been hit by a big one again the year before and on the first floor the water damage was extensive. It was no real problem though. I had money. We crewed the place through spring and summer and by start-of-season it was looking fine. I called it the Blue Parrot, after Sam.

  And Sam was the main attraction for a while. Drinks are drinks when you come right down to it, even though Shiela and Cindy had instructions to pour stiff ones, to leave the shotglasses under the bar for the time being and buy back for the regulars. As for the girls, you’d be hard pressed to find a waitress or barmaid anywhere near Sunset who wasn’t halfway gorgeous. So that left Sam our novelty.

  As novelties go I’ve seen worse. He’s an attention-getter for one thing, blue as the Caribbean with a bib of pure white across his chest. And he’s big around as the thighs on Schwarzenegger.

  We hung a high perch for him to the far left of the bar and if you were sitting over there you could toss him a salted peanut and watch him pluck it out of the air, toss it back like a shot of Cuervo and turn to you with that myopic-looking one-eyed stare and croak, “thanks, big boy, think can you afford another?” People swore he sounded like Bacall, though actually he’d learned that line from a hooker who used to come into my first place in Miami. If you threw too wide or low you got the same baleful stare only longer, and then after a while the bone-yellow beak would open. “God damn drunks!”

  He was ten years old and had plenty of lines by then, so he was good at the bar. But naturally I had ambitions for the place. As Florida goes Lauderdale’s a pretty wide-open town. The college kids do that and the gays. So a year later we went topless. We left Sam where he was and put a raised stage on the other side of the bar. The upstairs room was all tables but you could stand at the brass railing and look down at the dancers and at the same time cruise the bar.

  We did it right, too. Most of the girls were college girls so the turnover was high but that also meant you had dancers who were young and pretty and wholesome-looking, not beat-up hooker-types. There were a handful of local girls but I stayed away from them in general. Down here you never knew when somebody’s drunken boyfriend from Fort Meyers or Punta Gorda was going to come barreling across Alligator Alley with a shotgun in back of his pickup, bent on saving darlin’ Maisie from a life of squalor. They brought in a nice crowd, mixed, men and women and mostly young.

  We did real well with the wet teeshirt contests and the Best Buns contests and by the time we were open two years to the day I could count on packed houses three nights a week and no real slack time at all. We held our own off season, too, while other places closed down altogether.

  Sam got fat. I fell in love with the new bartender.

  Bernie was her name and she was older than most, thirty-four, and she’d been married once the same way I’d been married, which was badly. For me home was a block away, right on Sunrise. Home for her was all the way across town. In no time at all my dresser drawers were full of skimpy teeshirts, shorts and panties, and her sister from Wisconsin was living at the place across town. I never regretted it.

  We came up with another attraction that year. Her name was Mary.

  Had it not been for Bernie I probably wouldn’t have hired her. It would have been too much temptation put in my way. You get used to topless dancers. But nobody got used to Mary.

  “Bwwaaak! Major babe alert!” was the first thing out of Sam’s mouth when he spotted her. He was only stating the obvious. But there was plenty more than that. The only way I can say it right now is that Mary was intimidating to look at—that beautiful. Why in the world she wanted to dance topless for the Blue Parrot I never did figure. She was a pre-med student. Yet she could have been anything—model, movie actress, even, from what I could see, a legitimate dancer. Up on the stage her moves were terrific, if you ever got by that strong perfect body long enough see the moves.

  And that glance.

  It was amazing how she could rivet an audience with that glance. Her eyes were a pale, pale blue. Incredibly bold. Onstage they seemed to flicker everywhere at once, sweeping the entire ground floor and half the guys in the balcony. I never in my life saw so many men trying to make eye-contact with a woman. And a half-naked woman at that. It was uncanny. From the first night she danced she got the feature spot, and I never heard a single complaint fro
m any of the other girls, all of whom had been there longer than she had. You knew she deserved it.

  She had no boyfriends. She told me once that she’d never met a man as tough as she was and I believed her. The only one she flirted with was Sam, who’d wink at her. And I swear that now and then I’d catching him leering.

  It was Mary who got the bright idea about the body painting. Like I say, she was a bold one. Here she was, brand new, with the best spot in the show, and she’s rocking the boat, trying to change things instead of just leaving well enough alone. If the idea had flopped it wouldn’t have helped her much with me. But of course she knew all along it wouldn’t flop. After all—they were going to paint her body.

  The way it worked was that every night the customer got a raffle ticked with his first drink, right off the bat. At midnight I’d step up on the stage with all the tickets in a grey fedora hat and Sam perched on my arm. I’d stir the tickets around and then Sam would dip down and pull us out a winner. One of the girls would bring paintpots and brushes from off stage. Mary would come out and dance, and at the end of the dance she’d strike a pose, freeze, and I’d read the number on the ticket.