The Ballad of Dingus Magee

by David Markson

  “You look for bim-bam, hey? Twenty-five cent, real hot damn bargain.”

  “I look for the doc’s,” Dingus said.

  “Doc’s? Why you look for there? You come scoot on around behind wagon, Anna Hot Water fix you up pretty damn nifty, better than that old doc. What for you hold onto yourself that way for anyhow, hey?”

  But Dingus had limped past her, considering a row of adobe brick houses which fronted on the main street. “That’s Doc’s, ain’t it—on up to the end there?”

  “Maybe, sure, who care?” The squaw trundled after him. “You don’t change your mind first, hey? You go to Big Blouse Belle’s, pay whole damn dollar. Anna Hot Water, only damn independent bim-bam in town. Damn hot stuff too, you betcha. Twenty cent, maybe? Fifteen?”

  Dingus left her, grimacing when the odor followed him for a time, although still laughing to himself. The pain had diminished almost wholly now. He led his horse into the doctor’s small barn, easing its bit but not unsaddling the animal, before he crossed the silent sandy yard to knock at the rear door.

  The doctor appeared almost at once, a short, elderly, scarcely successfiil but roguish-eyed man carrying a lamp that he raised for recognition’s sake. That came immediately also. “Well,” he said cheerfully, not quietly either, “ifn it ain’t Dingus. Been expecting you, what with another of your chums just brought in. You come for your vest like always, I reckon?”

  “I reckon. Only I also got a—”

  “Well, come in, come in!” The doctor waved him into a familiar kitchen, turning to set aside the lamp. “I jest put that feller Turkey to sleep inside—nothing but a scratch, actually.” He was dipping water into a coffee pot with a gourd, his back turned. “But you’re gonter get one of them poor critters murdered yet, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Ah, Doc, you know Hoke—he couldn’t hit nobody if’n he was shooting smack-bang down a stone well. Matter of fact he missed Turkey so bad tonight, durned if’n he dint go and—”

  “Sit a spell,” the doctor said, glancing across his shoulder. “You look a mite peaked yourself.”

  “Don’t reckon I can,” Dingus said.

  “Can’t what?”

  “Can’t sit,” Dingus said. “What I been trying to tell you, about how Hoke ain’t never gonter murder nobody. Shucks, he were aiming at Turkey all the while, but durned if’n the old blind mule-sniffer dint go and plink me square in the ass—”

  “There some new preacher feller in town these days, Doc?” Dingus asked. He lay on his stomach on a leather couch, with his head raised as he tried to watch.

  “Stop jiggling, there,” the doctor told him. “If a man could get to see his own backside without he needed a mirror, I reckon maybe folks wouldn’t get booted there so frequent as they do. What’s that about a preacher?”

  “Tall feller, bald as a bubble. Got only one arm.”

  “Oh, that’s jest Brother Rowbottom. Can’t say if’n he were ever ordained anywheres, but he does take himself for a preacher at that, if’n he can get anybody to listen. Talk about a good swift foot where it fits, he gets that from old Belle Nops pretty regular himself, seeing as how he’s got the notion that the best place to tell folks about sin is where they’s doing it. Goes pounding on up to the bordello and yammering the Lord’s own storm about fornication and what all else, or fer as long as he can outrun Belle anyways. Don’t do no harm, I judge. Hold on there, this might pain you some—”

  Dingus pressed his jaws together, clutching the arm of the couch as the doctor probed. He released his breath slowly.

  “Got it,” the doctor went on. “I reckon it must of been spent a little, maybe deflected off’n your saddle first, or otherwise it would of torn right through. But this ain’t critical a-tall.” He crossed the room, removing something from a low cabinet. “Yep, Brother Rowbottom. Been around about a month now. Does a little pan mining too, I believe, though he ain’t had much luck with it. Mostly he jest tickles folks.” The doctor came back. “Won’t be but a while longer—keep on lying still there. Come to think on it, we been getting a right smart of new folks in town of late. Even a new schoolteacher.”

  Dingus winced, tensing his cheeks at an unexpected sting. “I dint even hear tell there were a school,” he said.

  “Well, there weren’t, until Miss Pfeffer chanced on along last month. She come out to many up with some Army lieutenant over to Las Cruces, were the original of it, except the lieutenant drunk some alkali water about a week before she got here and up and died. You recollect that wood frame house Otis Bierbauer were building up the road here before that drunk Navajo bit him one night, and then it turned out the Navajo weren’t drunk but had the rabies and we had to shoot the both of them? She moved in there. Right proper Eastern lady, a little horsy-looking in the face maybe, but a Up-smacking shape to her, even if’n it’s all such virgin soil there’s doubtless nine rows o’ taters could be harvested under her skirts.”

  “Ain’t no such animal,” Dingus offered.

  “Well, your chum Hoke Birdsill’s sure found out otherwise. He’s been courting to beat all, ever since she got here, without he had no more luck than a gelded jackrabbit. Sits up there in her parlor holding his derby hat on his knee is the all of it. But then Hoke’s been in a bad fix over proper flesh to bed down for half a year now, ever since he apprehended you that one time and Belle cut him off from free poontang up to the house. That’s how come he got hisself into trouble with that squaw to start with.”

  “I don’t reckon I heard about that neither, Doc.”

  The doctor was trimming bandages with a Bowie knife, standing within Dingus’s vision now, although he did not look up. “Pretty amusing, actually,” he said. “She’d be a Kiowa from the square shape to her forehead, I’d judge, although most like she’s got some mongrel strains to her too. Name’s Anna Hotah or some such, but folks settles for Anna Hot Water and lets it go at that. Seems old Hoke got to be mighty tight with a dollar once you’d escaped him out of both his pimping job and that reward money to boot, which didn’t leave him no more than his forty dollars a month from being sheriff, and so one day he rides off into the hills and he’s gone for, oh, like onto a week, and when he gets back it develops he’s got this squaw in tow. Comes in a bit battered and hangdog-looking also, like he’s had a wearying time somewheres, but he don’t say nothing about that. This were eight, ten weeks ago, I calculate, and he had the squaw living in a lean-to out back of the jail after that. But then like I say, Miss Pfeffer gets to town, and Hoke kicked out the squaw and commenced his courting. But poor old Hoke, Anna Hot Water ain’t took to the idea so good yet. What I hear tell, she keeps tracking after him, calling him some right potent names and threatening to claim his scalp too, if’n he don’t marry up with her. Causes Hoke a mite of embarrassment, you might say, specially what with his intentions toward Miss Pfeffer.”

  “I reckon,” Dingus laughed. The doctor was wiping his hands.

  “You can hoist your trousers back on, lad. You in the mood for a snort?”

  “I’d be obliged. What kin I pay you, Doc?”

  “Oh, weren’t complicated. Dollar be adequate.” The doctor lifted a bottle from a desktop, holding it while Dingus adjusted his buckles. “But speaking of gossip, I hear tell you been up to some shenanigans of late yourself.”

  “No more’n usual, I reckon. But meantimes you ain’t never gonter manage to retire on jest a lone dollar, Doc—”

  “Oh, a man don’t hardly make a living for fifty years, he gives up on it eventually. But no, what I hear, they got you posted all the way back up to nine thousand or more in rewards, now.”

  Dingus took the bottle, nodding thoughtfully. “You know, Doc, Pm hanged if n I don’t hear the same thing. But it’s right peculiar, too. Because to speak the Lord’s truth, I’ve been sort of behaving myself most currently. Oh, I done a few harmless little pranks here and there, but they never added up to more’n four thousand and five hundred dollars in bounty on me, and that’s a true fact.
But then last month I find there’s a whole five thousand more dollars on top of that, and durned if’n I weren’t all the way down to Old Mex when them last ones happened. Looks like if a feller gets a mite of a reputation they’ll hold him in account fer everything, even if’n he’s tending to his own business somewheres else.”

  “Well now, that’s jest one of the penalties of fame, I reckon.” The doctor disappeared into the next room, and when he returned he carried the vest and the sombrero. “Blood’s dried,” he said, “but the bullet hole’s up under the arm this time—won’t show so proudly as these earlier ones.”

  “Turkey still sleeping in there?”

  “I give him a strong dose, since he turned out the nervous kind. Peed all over my kitchen table when I went to work on him. You got somewheres you’re gonter hole up, Dingus? You won’t be able to ride none, not for a couple of days, and even then you’d best have a pillow in the saddle.”

  Dingus was buckling into his guns. “There’s places, I reckon.”

  “Beats me why you come back on in here so frequent anyways, what with Hoke all riled up about you the way he’s been.”

  “I got me some special plans this time.”

  “Well, you better wait on them until you can ride. I’d let you stay here, except there’s a limit to the law-breaking a man can do, even if’n he does happen to be a medical doctor.”

  “Don’t fret youself, Doc.” They were at the door. “Lissen, you don’t mind, I’d favor to leave my horse out there in your barn for a spell.”

  “You young studs,” the doctor said.

  Unhurriedly, Dingus crossed the yard to unsaddle and feed his mount. When he emerged from the barn he was carrying his Winchester in one hand and his shotgun in the other. He was whistling when he retraced his steps along the path he had followed earlier.

  So he did not quite have to reach the overturned wagon this time before she materialized out of its shadows. “You want bim-bam? Best damn bim-bam this whole damn town.”

  The idea had come to him in the barn, and he chuckled softly. “Howdy,” he said.

  “Oh, sure, you come back, hey? Change your mind like smart feller. Twenty-five cent, cash in advance.”

  “Ain’t that,” Dingus said, smelling her once more. “Turns out I’m in rotten shape anyhow.”

  “How come is that? That old Doc, he no fix you up so good? I told you, stay with Anna Hot Water, she fix you up real damn neat.”

  “I hear tell you acquainted with Sheriff C. L. Hoke Bird-sill. That a fact?”

  “That a fact, okay. That son-um-beetch. He marry me pretty damn quick, you betcha, or I fix him pretty damn quicker.”

  “I hear tell he ain’t gonter marry you a-tall. What I hear, he’s gonter marry that there schoolteacher, Miss Pfeffer.”

  “Hey, where you hear that? That son-um-beetch, I fix him quick, he try that.”

  “Well, I hear it for a gen-u-ine fact, all right.” Talking, Dingus had set the shotgun against the tilting wagon. Now he shrugged. “Well, I’m gonter be moseying on.”

  “That son-um-beetch,” Anna Hot Water said. Dingus had started away. “Hey, you in rotten shape okay, I think. You don’t even remember your shotgun here.”

  “I’m right sick,” Dingus said, not taming back. “I don’t reckon I can even carry it no more.”

  “Hey?” Anna Hot Water said.

  “Be a right fancy wedding, Hoke and that there schoolteacher,” Dingus said. He left it with her, whistling again.

  So he was truly amused now, and when the rest of it occurred to him he actually had to stop and press a hand over the wound as he laughed. “Why, surely,” he told himself. “Especially since I got to put off what I come for anyways.”

  He had to cross the main street, and lights blazed in several saloons, but no one was about. He did not hurry. Farther down he could see lamps beyond several of Belle’s upper windows also.

  He found the house easily enough, still grinning, but then he paused in the brush behind it to stand for a time quite thoughtfully, blowing into a fist. There were no lights here. “But we know you’re in there, Miss Pfeffer, ma’am,” he said aloud. “Jest alaying in your lily bed and dreaming juicy dreams about old Hoke, ain’t you? So now how are we gonter manipulate this in the most guaranteed and surefire way? Why nacherly, we’ll jest take a lesson from Hoke hisself…”

  So when the light came into the doorway in answer to his knock, all four of his revolvers and his Winchester were well hidden in the sage, and he himself was huddled against the railing of the narrow plank porch, his arms pressed into his stomach. His hair was disheveled, and his shirt was torn, and there was dirt smeared across his face. “Please!” he cried, and there was a whimper of anguish in his voice, “oh, please, help me, help me—”

  “Who’s there? What—”

  “Please, ma’am!” Dingus staggered toward the indrawn door, lifting his face plaintively to the light. “Outlaws! I need help bad. I been hurt—”

  “Why, you are hurt. And you’re just a boy—”

  “Yes’m. If I could only come inside.”

  He managed to slip past her in her confusion, stumbling toward a table and bracing himself there with his head hanging again. He commenced to pant.

  “But what is it? Do you need a doctor? Should I—”

  “They’re after me! The door! Please, oh please, out of Christian charity—”

  “But I don’t—”

  The door closed, however, perhaps because he had turned to confront her again, once more with his face screwed into a grimace of terror and plaintiveness (although he was seeing the woman herself finally now also, the mouse-colored hair in curl papers, the long blunt equine jaw, the plain dull disturbed expression above the drab nightrobe, so that even as he continued to feign desperation he was already thinking, “Well, Doc dint tell me any lie about her looks, but at least she ain’t built bad a-tall”). “Thank you,” he gasped. “The good Lord will bless you for this kind deed done for a boy in distress.”

  “But what is it? What’s—”

  He let his breath become regular, straightening himself somewhat. “Badmen,” he declared with gravity then. “They shot my old clipped daddy, kilt him dead, and now they’re after me because I seen their faces and can be a witness. They shot me too, only I can’t tell you where. What I mean, it’s sort of delicate, being my backside—”

  “Oh, you tragic boy. But I don’t see any blood. Is it—”

  “No,” he said quickly, “that were earlier. I got that patched up, but then I saw them again and now they’re hunting me. Like fiends. In the town here.”

  “But the sheriff— shouldn’t you go to Sheriff Birdsill?”

  “Oh, no, no—” Dingus lifted a hand imploringly. “That’s jest what they expect me to do, so they’ll be watching over that way, do you see? But I’d be safe from harm’s way here, if’n you’ve got a floor for me to rest on—only ‘til dawn, and then I’d slip away and never intrude upon your goodness again. You’d be saving a wretched orphan’s life, ma’am.”

  Miss Pfeffer kept glancing toward the door, concerned for him but still dubious, so he lurched away from her then and staggered toward a farther room, clutching at the doorframe for support. “Oh, but it pains me so!” he sobbed.

  “Oh, dear me—” Miss Pfeffer sprang after him. “Yes, you dear child, lie down, use my bed there, it’s—”

  “Oh, no ma’am, you’re too kind. Any old place on the floor will do me…” Dingus sagged into her arms.

  “But you are hurt! Here, I insist!”

  So he let himself be led to the already turned-back bed, tumbling across it. He lay on his side, with his feet over the edge. “My boots,” he sighed. “I jest ain’t got the strength to—”

  “Here, here, let me—” Miss Pfeffer set down her lamp, kneeling to the first of them. It came free easily, exposing the soggy, bloodstained sock. “Oh!” Miss Pfeffer cried. “Oh, it’s all—”

  “Yes’m. I lost considerabl
e amounts before I got to the doc.”

  “Oh dear! Dear me!” She removed the other boot, rising to hold it in consternation. The color had drained from her long face, such color as there had been. “Your clothes. Do you think you ought to—”

  “Yes’m, I’d rest far more comfortable. Only”—Dingus blushed, lowering his eyes—“I’d take it right kindly if’n you’d leave. I can manage, I’m sure I can—”

  Miss Pfefier’s own face was averted. “But you’ll call me, if you’re too ill—”

  “Yes’m.”

  He undressed leisurely then, hearing her pace elsewhere in the house. Now and then she mumbled something. When he extinguished the lamp, calling out to her, she pranced back into the room anxiously.

  “I hope you’ll forgive the lamp being off without your permission,” Dingus started then. “But my daddy would think badly of me, if’n I were lacking my proper clothing in a lady’s presence without the light was out. Oh, my poor daddy—” Dingus commenced to sob. “Right before my very eyes, this very day, they shot him down like a dog, and I won’t never kiss his dear furrowed brow again—”

  So Miss Pfeffer hovered above him now. “You unfortunate soul. How did it happen? Will it help you to talk about it?”

  Dingus sobbed and sobbed. “It were rustlers. They took our cattle, even every last helpless little calf that my daddy toiled so hard to care for. And then they set fire to our ranch, too, that my daddy homesteaded with the sweat of his tired, lame shoulders. Oh, it were jest unbearable!”

  A hand stroked his own in commiseration. “And to think they would take up arms against someone of your age!” Miss Pfeffer shuddered. “But your mother, don’t you have a—”

  “Oh,” Dingus wailed, “don’t make me talk about my mother, please! That were too sad, I still can’t think about it without I start to weep worse’n ever!” The hand bad started to lift; Dingus clutched at it desperately. “And it’s all the more sadder here, too, because you remind me of her. Not that you’re anywheres near as old as her, but jest that you’re beautiful the same way. And kind, too, and refined. But then those dreadful Comanches come, and they dragged her out into the fields, and they bound her to four stakes in the ground, and then they—” Dingus emitted a choked gasp. “But it ain’t a fit thing to relate before a woman. It were God’s pure mercy that she died within the month. I weren’t but eleven…”