Paradise Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “He’s at the whorehouse now?” I said, half rising from my chair.

  “He may well be,” Cecil said.

  “Where is this place?”

  I was shaking like a leaf in a storm as Cecil gave me directions, and a bloody haze was swimming before my eyes.

  Cecil finished his drink, looked at mine, then at me.

  I nodded.

  He took my glass and downed it. He got up, got my guns.

  He said, “I said one pistol, but I figure I’ll get in as much trouble for one as all of them. The rifle, too, right?”

  I started digging in my coat for the claim checks, but he said, “Naw, I know what’s yours. Two of them is real interesting. That pistol with the shotgun load, that looped rifle.”

  He tore the tags off and gave them to me. He said, “Marshal asks if you gave me your guns I’m going to lie, and if it comes down to me getting in trouble with the marshal, I’m going to call you a nigger and say anything I need to say to keep my ass out of the jail. We understood?”

  “We are,” I said. “You keep the rifle here. It don’t work out for me, I don’t come back for it by tomorrow evening, then you can have it.”

  I took a breath and put the pistols in my coat pockets, made sure they would pull free quickly. “You telling me about this to help me get my man or to get in good with the madam?”

  “One thing helps another,” Cecil said.

  I walked out of the livery and started up the street. It was a goodly walk. It was a building down below the stockyards and holding pens. I slid around back, seen there was lights at the back windows and some sliding out from under the door. There was a lantern with red glass in it hung over a long nail above the doorway.

  Getting my grit up, I opened the door and slid in. It was a hallway, and on the walls there was cloth hangings of all colors and designs, and there was a painting of a naked woman riding a horse in a wide gold frame. She was lying sideways on it, and she had long blond hair and looked sleepy, like maybe she’d forgotten her nightgown and had gone riding not fully awake. To the left was a flight of stairs with the wall on one side and a railing on the other.

  An older, meaty white woman with hair as rough-looking as a horse’s mane came sliding into the hallway from a wide opening that led into a room where I could see a fancy red couch, a blue chair, more paintings, and a broken-down piano. I took a guess right away that was the place where the bouncers got bounced. The woman was wearing a pink dress, and the right side of it was torn. A titty that looked like it belonged to an old milk goat was dangling out.

  The woman said, “You got to be the one Cecil’s sending.” She tried to poke that wild titty back behind that ripped dress, but the rip didn’t leave it any place to go. It stayed free and in action.

  I almost laughed. Cecil had set me up to do this job, just as I thought. The woman, of course, had to be none other than Mabel Jean.

  “Unless you’re overrun with colored men with pistols in their pockets,” I said, “I’m the one he sent.”

  “He’s up there,” she said gesturing up the stairs. “He’s got girls with him, and I don’t want them hurt. Some of them are still working off their room and board.”

  I could hear him then, and I recognized that voice as surely as I would have recognized that of my mother. He was yelling about how they should arrange their asses, and he was saying, “Sing, you jezebel, sing.”

  I could hear the girls start in singing “Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight.” Not a one of them whores could have carried a note in a bucket with the lid tapped on tight.

  “You look smaller than my niggers, and they got broken up,” she said.

  “This here pistol improves my stature,” I said, drawing my LeMat from my coat pocket.

  “That’s what they thought,” she said.

  “Them bouncers was armed?”

  She nodded. “I think that big bastard got shot once, but nothing he took note of.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “I do say.”

  I took that into consideration, put a foot on the stairs.

  “Be sure and kill him,” she said. “I think he’s the unforgiving sort.”

  “I’m not going up there with the intention of giving him a flesh wound,” I said, and continued up the stairs.

  I was about at the top when I heard a smacking sound, like someone had slapped their hands together. Then one of the girls let out with a yip, and on behind that came a bloodcurdling Indian-style yell that I knew had come from Golem. It was so loud and surprising I almost filled my pants.

  There was three doors along that upstairs hall, but he and them women was so loud up there I didn’t have any trouble knowing which door they was behind. There was also smoke drifting out of a wide crack at the top of the doorway, and I could smell that it was tobacco smoke, strong enough to be that of a cigar or a pipe.

  I practically ran to that door, and, lifting my leg, I drove my boot into it.

  26

  The door cracked loudly, swung back, and slammed against the wall.

  It was a little room filled with smoke and the smoke was wrapped around a bed and some of it rose up and grew thick and covered the ceiling like a cloud. On the bed were two nude white women, both of them striped with blood and crying, and there was a colored gal bent over the end of the bed rail, her head lying against the sheets, her face turned from me, and Golem, fully dressed, had a whip in his hand—a whip made of cloth and a wooden handle. He was holding the cloth and snapping that wooden handle upside that colored gal’s head. She looked to be unconscious, as she was just dangling there, not trying to move away from the blows. Blood had dripped down from her and was on the bed and on the floor.

  Golem turned his head and showed a mouth full of a big black cigar. It was the source of the smoke that filled the room. I raised my pistol. His forehead had that mark of ash on it, and that was to be my spot to shoot.

  “Deadwood Dick,” he said, around that fat cigar.

  “Big bastard,” I said, and I was about to squeeze off a round but was denied the pleasure.

  Golem wasn’t so out of his head thinking he was some Jewish monster who couldn’t be hurt that he didn’t have the sense to whip that poor woman’s body around in such a way it come in front of me and spoiled my aim. After he pushed her forward and she went tumbling to the floor in front of me, he wheeled and ran toward the open window behind him, grabbed at a rifle leaning against the wall, and jumped. That big bull of a man went through that open window with that rifle as easy as if he was hot molasses sliding along a greased pan.

  Running to the window, I looked down. It was quite a fall, but if he was hurt, it wasn’t enough to keep him from getting up and running off, heading toward the stockyard. I got a glimpse of his rifle lying on the ground.

  Instead of jumping out the window, I decided on the stairs. I wheeled and stepped over the girl on the floor—for that’s really what she was, a girl—and was in the hallway, down those stairs, and out the back so fast I don’t really remember the trip. Next thing I knew I was outside and running along the back of the building until I come to where Golem had landed. His cigar was on the ground, smashed up, and I could see why he left the Winchester. It was busted from the fall.

  “He’s got a pistol in his boot,” I heard a voice call out. I looked up and seen it was one of the white girls. Little beads of blood caught the light as they fell from her mouth and nose and dripped down not more than half a foot in front of me.

  “Obliged,” I said, and moved on after my intended target.

  I came alongside the stockyard pens, which was packed with longhorns. There was cow manure that had oozed from out of the lot and under the pen slats, and there was enough light I could see Golem had run through it, for there was his big boot marks. I eased along careful-like then, staying close to the pens, trying to not take to mind what I was stepping in, for it was near ankle-deep.

  The cows was stirring restlessly, and I seen
that the tracks I was following had ended. There was cow manure on one of the slats of the pen where he had climbed up and had taken off through their gathering. I climbed up carefully and looked out over the cows. I seen Golem moving through them, trying to stay low and slide under their necks. One moment I’d get a good view, then a cow would take his place, then Golem’s head would bob up, and then he’d stoop and be gone again.

  It was a crazy thing to do, but I put my pistol in my coat pocket, worked my way to the top slat of the fence, and stepped off of it. I landed a foot on a cow’s head, leaped to another’s back, and then another. It was easy enough to do, as they was so tight in that holding pen.

  Then there was a shot. A cow that hadn’t done anything but walk a thousand miles to be a steak dinner took the round in the head and went down. I was by this time having less luck with my cow jumping, as they had really started to stir. I fell in between some cattle and splashed in cow mess, which didn’t smell like a bed of petunias.

  That shot and my fall got the other cows frightened, and they began to shove and push and thud about even more, and then one fell over the dead one. I was just able to avoid its horns as I worked to my feet, but this had started other cattle stumbling, and pretty soon there was a big, kicking pile of them.

  There was another sharp snap from Golem’s pistol, and if it hit anything I’m not in memory of it. The cows went loco. Horns flashed, hooves thumped, beef rushed by either side of me. I grabbed a running cow around the neck and swung my feet up over its haunches, dangled under its neck as it ran. It knocked other cows aside, tripping over one, stumbling a bit, but not so much either of us hit the ground. It got its hooves under it, and away we went again, striking a row of slats full-on, me at the forefront of the cow’s battering ram. This split the slats and broke the pen and sent the cow into the open. I was flung off my ride as it made a wild turn, tripped, and went rolling along the ground. Cows came rushing through that split in the fence, hooves flying by me, stirring the dirt into clouds of dust and manure.

  Another shot was fired, and a cow bought the farm—threw its head forward and stuck its horns in the dirt so hard it flipped, like an acrobat trying out a failed headstand. Cows was bumping against me. A shot rang out, and Golem managed to pop him another cow. He wasn’t shooting anywhere near me, but he was hell on cattle.

  I’d been damn lucky and had only been shoved about. I was well beyond the gap in the fence and had rolled up against a building wall. As fortune would have it, those cows turned toward the lights and the sounds of the cowboys in the streets. The cowboys was firing guns off and yelling, which meant more than one of them had been unwilling to turn in their pistols and would most likely be spending a night in jail.

  The cattle was hastening through that alley like they was being shot out of a cannon, perhaps confused on where the shots were coming from, knowing only that they should flee in some direction, and any direction would do.

  I hauled myself into a doorway as the longhorns charged by me. When their numbers thinned, I went running along the wall, away from the direction they was taking. I seen Golem a good ways ahead, between the holding pens and that building I was up against. I ran after him. He turned as if to shoot, but I fired first. I know it hit him, because I could tell by the way his body jerked and the fact that I don’t miss much if I’m in range. The shot didn’t put him down, though. He darted into an alley, and I went after him.

  There wasn’t much light down that alley, but there was plenty of stinking trash barrels and plenty of shadows to go with them. I pulled the Colt from the other pocket and, armed with two revolvers, started down that alleyway feeling as if I was naked. There was all them barrels, of course, but it was still about twenty feet before I could reach one to hide behind, and a bullet might pass through one, meaning they wasn’t necessarily all that good a protection, though they was working for Golem in that I didn’t know exactly where he was hiding. But I reasoned he hadn’t had time to reach the other end and make his way into the street. Won’t lie to you: hesitation came over me for an instant. Then I remembered Win and how we had been on that hill in the dark, the sweet sound of her flute when she was happy, that so-fine kiss, and then there was that stinking, bloody cowhide wrapped around me, holding me tight like a fist squeezing a grape. Golem pulling Madame and my Win from the wagon, those men in a lusty crowd around them, Madame’s mutilated body, Win naked in the firelight, that blank look she had as she turned her head toward the wall. It put steel in me, brother. Cold blue steel.

  So I inched onward, my hide prickling, and then, well, I don’t know what overcome him. Either he was bored with the whole thing, mad, or thought he had the advantage, because I hadn’t gone more than a few feet when a large shadow swelled up from behind one of the barrels. It was without question Golem. His pistol barked red fire, and mine barked back. He tried to shoot another time, but either his gun was empty or his hammer hit on a bad load. I fired with both pistols—two shots from the LeMat, one from the Colt. It made Golem dance about a little, and then he threw his pistol aside, snatched a barrel above his head, trash flying out of its mouth, and charged down the alley at me.

  I couldn’t have missed him. It was like shooting at a buffalo tied to a tree. I fired two more shots, one from each pistol. Then that barrel come flying. I tried to dodge, but it hit me, and all the trash flew out. The Colt went skittering from my left hand. I fell on my back, tried to get up, my boot heels scratching in the dirt.

  I flicked the baffle on the LeMat as Golem leaned over and grabbed my shirtfront, lifted me up like I was a pocket handkerchief. I stuck my pistol straight in his face and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun load roared like a lion.

  There was a scream, high-pitched for a man of his size, and the next thing I know I’m on my back, and Golem is lying on the ground holding his face with both hands. I got up and eased over careful-like to look down on him. The light wasn’t good, but since he wasn’t wearing a shirt, I could see he was all shot up and bleeding right smart. He was still holding his face as if to keep it together, moaning and rolling his head from side to side. I couldn’t believe he was alive. I couldn’t believe he was sitting up. I squatted down beside him.

  I said, “My name is Nat Love, as you may well know. I am also called Deadwood Dick, and you have wronged me and the woman I love.”

  I know how that sounds, but that’s how I spoke to him, if not exactly those words, making it as dramatic as I could. It was stuff I had read out of that dime novel about Bill during that trip to the barber’s. “I have avenged that wrong, or will have done so shortly, as you’re shot up something awful and won’t be pulling daylight.” I think I even called him a scoundrel or a rascal. I hope I did.

  A tooth dripped out from under his hands and fell between his legs.

  Now that it was done, I didn’t feel all that satisfied. I won’t say that disappointment set in. I was glad I had done it, but seeing him suffer like that wasn’t giving me a bit of pleasure. I slipped the LeMat in my coat pocket, pulled the derringer out of it, stuck it into Golem’s ear, and cocked back the hammer.

  He didn’t try to move away. In fact he quit rocking his head. Blood squeezed through his fingers and dripped. He pushed his head toward the derringer; let the barrel rest there like a steel earwig.

  I heard him say in a voice that sounded as if he was trying to talk under water, “I’m God’s avenger. I’m not supposed to die.”

  “I think you’re mistaken,” I said.

  “I’m made of mud,” he said.

  “Well, your mud’s got runny,” I said.

  He lowered his hands. A chunk of his face, including one eye, was gone. The other side of his face was riddled with buckshot. “This doesn’t make any sense. I can’t be hurt.”

  I squeezed the trigger on that little gun, and the next moment he made a liar of himself. His hands fell loose from his ruined face, and his legs snapped apart, like he had mounted an invisible horse. He fell back so hard his head sounded lik
e a bag of flour hitting the ground.

  I saw then that a watch chain was dangling from his pocket and his turnip watch had fallen out of it. It was a lidded sort, and it had popped open, like maybe he had been trying to look at the photo inside of it in the dark before I come into the alley.

  I tugged the watch loose of the chain. I don’t know why I did it, but I did. Maybe it was some kind of trophy.

  I put the watch in my pocket, tucked the derringer away, gathered up my own guns, and hurried out of the alley.

  When I got to the street it was full of cows. More had broke free of the pen. With all those cowboys firing pistols and hooting, the cattle had gone wild and were pounding down the street in a mad stampede. I got close to the buildings and kept walking. I seen a few of the critters had gone into the saloons as if to order beers. They was causing quite a ruckus. Women had gone to screaming and men was yelling.

  I felt a little guilty.

  I made my way to the livery, dodging horns and thousands of pounds of beef. I knocked on the wide door, and after a moment Cecil opened it a crack and let me inside. “Don’t let those cows in here,” he said, as if me and the cattle were plotting together to charge in and steal his cash box.