“I notice you’re not big on the hand-washing,” Albert remarked listlessly. The doctor either ignored the comment or was too busy focusing on the injury.
“Ooh, that’s a nasty one,” he observed, examining the wound. “We may have to take that off, otherwise you could wind up with a case of toe-foot.”
Albert sighed. “Okay, first of all, I don’t think that’s a real thing, and second of all, it’s a graze, Doc. I’m not gonna let you cut my foot off.”
“Suit yourself. But I’ve seen toe-foot turn into knee-leg in less than a week.”
“Just a dressing, thanks,” Albert responded curtly, now even more anxious to get this over with as quickly as possible.
Doctor Harper pulled open a drawer and retrieved a roll of bandages as Albert surveyed the small office. The remains of a roast chicken were scattered on a plate next to an open jar of laudanum, and a recently lit cigar sat precariously on the edge of a side table, its pointy tip still darkened with saliva. As for any sign of official physician’s credentials, the sole candidate hung in a wooden frame on the far wall.
“Texas Territory Medical College,” Albert read the handwritten diploma aloud as the doctor went to work on his leg. “So, is that a pretty prestigious place?”
“Yessir, third in my class,” Harper answered with genuine pride.
“Ah. And was this an indoor medical school?” Albert asked without a trace of sarcasm or irony.
“All right, there we go,” said the doctor, straightening up and smiling down at the new dressing. “Try to stay off it for a bit.”
Albert looked at the results. “Just a dry cloth bandage? That’s it?”
“Well, what else would you like me to do?”
“Clean it, maybe?” Albert answered, feigning patience. “So I don’t get an infection and die?”
“Well, now, that’s up to the Lord God.”
Albert stared for a beat. “I guess I’m looking for someone more reliable.”
They wished each other good day as Jesus the cat helped himself to Mrs. Callaghan’s large intestine.
On any given evening, the Old Stump Saloon was packed to the gills with gamblers, boozers, and unshaven purveyors of various foul smells. At times, in fact, there seemed to be virtually hundreds of different odors, all fiercely competing for dominance in the confined and poorly ventilated space.
But at two o’clock in the afternoon, the place was mostly deserted. A couple of frail-looking old cowhands sat at the bar staring into their glasses, but otherwise the lower level was empty.
Except for Edward Phelps.
Edward sat patiently on a wooden chair at the base of the stairwell that led up to the brothel rooms. He probably should have brought a book or something, he thought, but the wait wouldn’t be too long. In his hand he held a lovely late-spring bouquet of daisies, lilacs, and daffodils. From upstairs, the raucous sounds of sexual intercourse could be heard as Edward’s girlfriend, Ruth, was fucked wildly by a dirty cowboy.
“Oh, yes! YES!!” she screamed, her voice reverberating throughout the saloon.
“Yeah, you like me fuckin’ you, don’t you?” bellowed the dirty cowboy.
“Yes! Yes, it’s really terrific!” she shouted back between moans of ecstasy.
“I got dirt on my dick from workin’ outside all day!”
“I know! I love the scratchy feeling inside me!”
“Yeah, you like the dirt on my dick, don’t you?!”
“I do! I really do! It’s such a treat!”
Ruth’s sex talk had always been a bit clumsy, but her heart was in the right place, and as a prostitute she was exemplary: always on time for her shift, freshly bathed after every fifth customer, and willing to accommodate all types of fetishes. Edward admired her work ethic. The seriousness with which a person took professional obligations said a lot about their character. He was lucky to be with such a woman.
“Stick your finger in my asshole!” shouted the dirty cowboy.
“I’m excited to!” Ruth answered.
At that moment, Millie, the house madam, descended the stairs. She was plump, in her early forties, with the saucy, painted look of a career saloon whore. Her thick mound of done-up hair, no doubt once dark as onyx, now showed numerous streaks of gray. As she approached, she waved a beringed hand in the cobbler’s direction.
“Hi, Edward,” she said with a smile. Her cherry-red lips and heavily rouged cheeks, while undignified-looking in and of themselves, at least added some welcome color to the brown-on-brown room.
“Oh, hey, Millie.” Edward grinned, standing respectfully.
“You waiting for Ruth?”
“Yeah, I got off work a little early, so I thought I’d take her out for a picnic.”
“Oh. You’re a good boyfriend.”
“I try to be.”
Millie glanced toward the upper level. “Well, it sounds like she’s almost done,” she said, as the moans of orgasmic passion reached a dissonant crescendo.
“OH, GOD, I’M GONNA COME!” Ruth screamed.
“Those are pretty flowers,” Millie remarked.
Edward looked down at his bouquet with a proud grin. “I know, aren’t they beautiful? There are even a couple of tulips in here. They’re hard to come by this time of year, but Ruth is very particular.”
“OH, YES! SHOOT THAT DIRTY COWBOY CUM ALL OVER MY FACE!”
Edward adjusted his tie, hearing that Ruth was almost finished. “Do I look all right?” he asked, presenting himself to Millie for inspection.
“Yes, you’re … you’re fine,” she answered, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. “Say, Edward … can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Are you … okay with the fact that your girlfriend gets screwed by about fifteen guys every day and gets paid to do it?”
“Oh. Well, I mean, my job sucks too.”
“Yeah, but you repair shoes.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me!” Edward laughed. “The shoe business has been so slow since the Civil War ended.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, there’s just a lot less legs.”
Millie was about to press the original issue a bit further, when Ruth came bounding down the stairs, still in the process of pulling her clothes back on.
“Eddie, is that you?” she squealed happily.
He whirled around to meet her eyes and flung his arms wide open. “Hey, sweetheart!”
“What are you doing here?” she exclaimed, smothering him in a joyous embrace and kissing him flush on the lips.
He flinched. “Ooh, your breath is a little …”
“Sorry—I had to give a blow job.” She covered her mouth, her already red cheeks coloring just a bit more.
Edward smiled with genuine understanding. “That’s okay. Hey, I got done a little early, and I thought we could go for a walk out by the stream.”
Ruth hugged him all over again for his thoughtfulness. “Ohhh, you are the best! Yeah, c’mon, let’s go!” She gave him a peck on the cheek, then looked at Millie. “Don’t I have the best boyfriend in the world?”
Millie opened her mouth to respond, but nothing seemed fitting.
“Bye!” Ruth giggled, pulling a beaming Edward by the hand toward the saloon doors. “What time should I be back?” she asked, turning briefly back to Millie.
“Well, Clyde Hodgkins wanted to know if he could come by later on.”
“Oh—what’s he want?” Ruth asked.
“I think he wants anal.”
Ruth whirled around and grabbed Edward’s hands. “Oh, honey! We could afford to get you a new belt for church!”
Edward’s eyes widened as he registered his good fortune. “Wow, that’d be great!”
“I know!” Ruth erupted with delight, squeezing his hands and swinging them back and forth in a dancerly fashion.
“So, what time will you need her? 5:30 or so?” Edward asked Millie.
“Well, this isn’t really like a dentist’s offi
ce, Edward. He’ll probably stop in when he’s ready to put his penis inside an asshole.”
“Okay, we’ll say 5:00 just to be safe,” Edward said. And, with that, the couple hurried out into the afternoon sunlight, their love for each other outshining the brightness of the day.
Deadcow Bridge had earned its name back around the time that Old Stump’s first settlers rode west with dreams of making a new life for themselves. In addition to its human complement, the wagon train had brought with it two hundred head of beef cattle. But when the settlers reached the southwestern Arizona territory, the herd had succumbed to a mysterious illness and was decimated within a matter of days. In light of their misfortune, the weary pioneers decided to halt their westward journey and build their community on the spot. The terrain was somewhat rocky and not particularly forgiving, but the discovery of a nearby river revealed more desirable land beyond. However, when the company tried to cross the river, they found it to be too deep. A lack of passable shallows for some distance in either direction left the group stymied and frustrated. Then one of the wives came up with a novel solution: The settlers dragged all the cow corpses down to the river, and piled them up in the water. After a time, the pile became high enough that the settlers could use it as a bridge of sorts, allowing them to cross the river to the land beyond, which would eventually become Old Stump. Of course, the massive amount of decomposing bovine flesh in the water caused an epidemic that quickly wiped out the entire population. But the next settlers who arrived built a wooden bridge and crossed the river with ease, where they founded the town of Old Stump. Deadcow Bridge was hence named in tribute to the memory of the first settlers, and their tragic deaths from dead cow water.
It was there in the cool shade of the bridge that Albert sat sharing a picnic of fried chicken and fresh-baked bread with his girlfriend, Louise. The two had been together for a year and a half, and Albert counted himself extremely fortunate to have her in his life. She was a rare beauty, even discounting the standards of the western frontier, where most women were indistinguishable from bears. She had all her teeth too, which was another wondrous anomaly. Albert would often sit on the front porch with his arm around Louise, counting her teeth as they watched the setting of the desert sun.
Louise sat on the picnic blanket, her blond locks fluttering in the soft breeze, mimicking the gentle purling of the river waters. Her pale skin glowed with youth as she nibbled absently at a piece of bread with jam. She listened to Albert venting his frustration over the outcome of the day as she gazed out at the thousand tiny slices of white light flickering atop the lazy river.
“—I mean, that should’ve been the end of it, right?” he groused. “I tell him I’ll pay him off, we go our separate ways, and that’s it. But, no, the guy shoots me in the foot! Fuckin’ douche.”
He had been ranting for several minutes before he noticed that Louise appeared to be deliberately avoiding eye contact.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Louise looked down at her hands for a beat, then said the last thing Albert expected to hear. “You should’ve fought him, Albert.”
Albert stared at her with all the comprehension of a horse being asked to roll a cigarette. “Wait, what?”
“You should’ve fought Charlie Blanche.” All of a sudden, she had no difficulty meeting his gaze.
“Wha—are you putting me on?”
“We don’t know if your sheep grazed on his ranch,” she said. “It could’ve been Hurley’s cows. He should have to prove it, and he can’t. So, I dunno … You should’ve fought him.”
“Oh, my God, you’re serious.”
She nodded.
“Louise,” he sputtered, “the guy’s one of the best shots in the whole town! I mean, I look like I have Parkinson’s next to him.”
“What’s Parkinson’s?”
“Oh, just another way God mysteriously shows that he loves us. Look, I tried to psych myself up for the gunfight, but at the end of the day I’d rather not commit fucking suicide.”
And then, from out of nowhere, lightning struck. “Albert … I’m breaking up with you.”
When a parent, a sibling, or a close friend dies suddenly, the mind has an uncanny ability to process the news as a mistake, or fiction, or at worst a temporary reality that will surely correct itself in short order. The same sort of self-defense mechanism was activating within Albert’s mind right now.
“Wh … what?”
“I’m sorry.” She gave him a loving look, but it was all wrong. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t love he was seeing but rather sympathy. The look was one you might give a hospital patient before you told him the doctors were unable to save his balls.
Albert opened his mouth to speak, and what came out was, “I got shot today.”
“I know,” she answered.
Clearly she didn’t hear what I said, he thought.
“Ow,” he uttered, hoping that would drive the point home.
“I’m sorry you’re hurt,” she said, though to Albert she didn’t sound sorry enough.
His mental gears were now restarting their grind, and he began to process exactly what was happening. He was being dumped. “Louise, I—why? Because of a gunfight?”
“No, it’s not that. I mean, I guess maybe it gave me the little push I needed to finally come out and tell you—”
“Finally? What do you mean, finally? How long have you been planning this?!”
“God, you make it sound so malicious. I didn’t plan this, Albert. But … I have been feeling this way for a while. It’s … Look, you’re a really great guy. I’ve just … I’ve realized I want something else.”
The punches just kept on coming. Albert felt like he might throw up, and he hoped the words would beat the vomit to his mouth. “Louise, I love you! What else could you want? You’re my whole life! I’ve done everything for you for the past year and a half! Look, I know I’m only a sheep farmer, but I’m saving money, and as soon as—”
“Yeah, but you’re not even a good sheep farmer, Albert,” she interrupted. The sympathy in her expression was gone, and it seemed she was now beginning to offer her uncensored point of view. “I mean, your sheep are everywhere. The one thing a sheep farmer has to do is keep all his sheep in one place. I stopped by your farm the other day, and there was a sheep in the backyard, three way up on the ridge, two in the pond, and one on the roof.”
“That’s Bridget—she has a problem with retardation, but she’s full of love. Look, I think we’re getting off-track here,” Albert said, desperation taking over his tone. “Louise, if it’s not about the gunfight, tell me what it is! Tell me what the problem is, and maybe we can fix it!”
“Albert, you’re a good guy, for sure,” she responded, her voice softening once again to counter the sting of what she was about to say. “You’re … not good for me. I don’t wanna date anybody right now. I kinda have to deal with my own shit.”
“Shit? What shit? We live in a frontier town in the middle of the goddamn desert! There isn’t enough shit around for you to have any shit to deal with! My God, Louise, it’s been a year and a half! We talked about getting married!”
“Listen, if I was older, maybe the timing would be right, but I don’t wanna settle down yet. People are living to be 35 these days, so a girl doesn’t have to get married right away. I sorta have to work on myself right now.”
That was too much for Albert. “I have to work on myself?” he exclaimed. “Louise, that’s what girls say when they have a good thing staring them in the face and they’re too up their own ass to know what to do with it. I know you. You’re not up your own ass. You’re out here. Outside your ass. Where I can see you. And … you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
She spread her soft, white hands in a gesture that indicated quite clearly that she had nothing more to offer on the subject. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Albert. It’s over. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
His mi
nd was locking up again. “Wow,” he said quietly, the hurt coating his voice with a quavering thickness. “Louise … I love you.”
“I’m sorry.”
Then, with nothing more than a defeated shrug, she stood up and walked away.
And as Albert Stark sat among the long shadows that striped the golden glaze of the dying afternoon, he knew his life was over.
The sunset streaked across the Arizona sky, its miles and miles of titanic painted strokes illuminating the distant mesas, turning them a velvety pink. To an observer visiting the territory for the first time, the nightly visual feast would have been a breathtaking sight to behold. And though the spectacle was a regular one for him, viewed every evening from the front porch of his little farmhouse, Albert himself was not immune to its eye-popping chromatic sumptuousness. Tonight, however, he took no notice.
He rode toward his farm, stricken by a deadness of limb that twice nearly caused him to fall off his horse. Luckily for Albert, however, Curtis had been with him for almost eight years, and never was there a more reliable animal. Any horse will adapt to the rhythms of its rider, but equestrian skill had deftly avoided Albert; he was unbalanced and uncoordinated. His friends had all assumed that enough years in the saddle would solve the problem, but he simply had never improved.
But Curtis had. The horse would instinctively adjust his own weight to accommodate Albert’s lapses, an astonishing mark of intuitive protectiveness that made Albert love him more than he loved any human being.
Except, of course, Louise.
Her face hovered before him all the way home, the ghost of a severed appendage. In the image, she burst forth with an amaranthine smile that spoke lovingly of every shared experience now rendered hollow. That Louise still exists somewhere, he told himself. I just have to find her. Only when he neared the farm did he begin to emerge from the delusional haze. The bleating of his sheep jerked him back to reality with a sharp stab of sound.
Albert grappled for control of his catatonic stare, and surveyed his withering corral. The wooden fences were crumbling and badly in need of repair. And, as usual, there were sheep all over the place. Some were inside the corral, others were out in the yard, and, sure enough, there was Bridget, looking lost and confused up on the roof. For the life of him, Albert could not figure out how the fuck she kept getting up there. In his mind, he could hear Louise’s admonishing voice. She may have been wrong to dump him, but she was right about one thing: He was a shitty sheepman.
Seth MacFarlane's a Million Ways to Die in the West Page 2
