Ghost Town: A Novel

by Coover, Robert

  As though provoked by his retrospections, there’s a faint snort and whinny up the street. Can’t see a thing in the black night, but he heads that way, pausing to cut a coil of frayed rope off the saloon hitching post. He’s not at all sure what he’ll find, maybe another wild horse wandered into town, even his old mustang resurrected again, but, whatever it is up there, he estimates that, if he can see it, he’ll appropriate it and ride it out of here. The flat shapes crowding in on him as he passes them seem less like buildings than their absence, like black gaps in the world, and he recollects walking this way under the noonday sun and having the sensation even then of other buildings lurking like shadows behind the buildings he could see. Not that he credits such apprehensions. The usual jitters of the ingenerate gunfighter, he’s familiar with such false hauntings.

  Now, as he proceeds, gripping his rifle in one hand, rope in the other, he can make out a dim eery glow up ahead of him, and he recalls that it was up here somewhere that he first witnessed the beautiful widow lady, the one the men call the schoolmarm, though things may have got shifted about some on the street since last he walked it. Maybe, he thinks, maybe she’s set a light out in her window, a light lit just for him, knowing he’s out here and all alone and in need of some human comfort. The prospect of seeing her again spurs him on, such that soon he’s broken stride and is fairly bolting along, a sudden urgency upon him and a fear of the darkness at his back—and a fear for her, too, she may be in trouble again, it’s not easy for a woman like her out here, anything might be happening, and he’s the sheriff now, isn’t he?

  He’s barreling up the black street at full pelt, his head a farrago of dire yet lubricious visions, when it suddenly appears before him and paralyzes him in midstride: a majestic white stallion, more than twenty hands tall, glowing spectrally in the night from the light of the full moon, which has slid suddenly into view as if from behind a cloud in the cloudless sky. It is the most beautiful yet terrible thing he’s ever seen, a powerful bluff-breasted giant of a horse, lofty in carriage, scornful of all it surveys, most particularly scornful of him, standing there in the dark street, utterly awestruck, his knees gone to jelly, his heart hammering in his ears, and he realizes that to bestride such a noble and worshipful creature was the sole reason he came out here in the first place, must have been, if in fact he did come out and was not born here. Just how he is going to capture such a wondrous beast with this miserable coil of weather-rotted rope is not clear to him, however, and when the horse snorts thunderously and rears high above him, its head haloed in its streaming milk-white mane and its mighty forelegs pawing the air as though to punch holes in the night, even that falls from his hands. Before setting its hoofs back down on earth, the great white stallion lets forth a trumpeting whinny that seems to come cascading down upon him from the very dome of the sky, echoing and resounding from all directions as though to pin him there, stunned, where he stands. As the horse snorts and paws the ground, preparing to come at him, its red eyes ablaze as if inside its cranium were a fresh-stoked furnace, he knows he can do no other than to stand his ground, exhibiting a seeming bravado, whereas in truth it’s sheer terror that has petrified his limbs and nailed him to the spot. He hears the galloping hoofs before he sees the creature move, and then as suddenly it is upon him and his heart feels violently trammeled but his body remains upright and all is instantly dark and the moon is gone and the white horse, too, and he is alone once more in the vast empty night.

  His deputy, who is a goateed fat man with a flattened nose, finds him there in the middle of the dusty street, still rigid and locked in his boots, at high noon. Ho, sheriff, he says, picking up the dropped rope and looping it over a cocked arm and handing him his fallen rifle, we got a problem. The wimmenfolk in town is kickin up a awesome aggravation. It’s jest only about gittin raped too reglar by the goddam savages, but their pants is on fire, it’s a genuwine uprisin. I reckon mebbe yu better oughter talk to em.

  He blinks into the blinding sunlight, lets his arms unbend and fall to his sides, the rope drop away. Talk to em? He clears his throat, spits drily into the dead air. The sign on the building in front of him tells him he’s standing outside the jailhouse. I dont know nuthin about rape.

  Well jest tell em it’s a bad thing’n yu’ll see to it it dont happen no more.

  How the heck am I sposed t’do thet?

  Oh, aint much to it. Them wimmen mostly only imagine all that brutified belly-bangin anyhow, they aint got nuthin better t’do, cept bake pies or warsh our underwear. So yu tell em and ifn they dont jest take yer word fer it, well we kin slap em around fer a while, or else go cut us a bonyfide scalp or two; thet should usually oughter pacify em.

  He stares down at his deputy, who has eyes like little shotgun pellets buried in his lardy white cheeks and a dry unwholesome reek about him. I aint much inclined toward takin scalps.

  Shore yu aint, sheriff. The deputy smirks, nodding toward the scalp hanging from his gunbelt. But we aint got no choice, do we? Ifn we let them slits git poked by a buncha wild tattooed injun buttsmashers, it might cut inta their hankerin fer civvylized dick.

  Well thet aint no nevermind t’me. I’m gonna go bunk down in the jailhouse fer a stretch. This job’s plumb got me bushed.

  Aint no time fer thet, sheriff, here they come! He can hear them now, whooping and shrieking like savages on the warpath, sounds like hundreds of them, though there’s no one in sight yet in spite of it being more or less open space from where he stands all the way to the far horizon. Them ole flytraps is really riled up, sheriff, they got a awful mad upon themselves! I reckon yu better brace yerself’n ready yer weepons, yu may hafta shoot a parcel of em!

  Suddenly the main street is full of women in bright calico frocks, shawls, aprons, and sunbonnets, marching noisily seven or eight abreast, wielding brooms and rolling pins and banging tin pots, and led by the ginger-haired saloon chanteuse, the one the men call Belle, all rigged out in her dancehall costume, ruby pin in her cheek and powdered cleavage on display. He takes his deputy’s sleeve-tugging advice and, cradling his rifle, steps back up on the wooden jailhouse porch for an elevated view, as the women, looking fierce and determined under the blazing sun, crowd up around below him. One of them, a tall ugly old buzzard with a frilly housecap pulled down over her tangled greasy hair, hikes her full skirts, reaches into her bloomers, and hauls out a pistol, shooting into the air. He fires and the gun flies from her hand.

  Aw shit, sheriff, she yelps, squeezing her wounded hand between her legs. I wuz jest only tryin t’whoop it up a little!

  Yu got a sumwhut tetchy aspect about yu t’day, sheriff hon, remarks the chanteuse with a wink, giving her breasts a hitch. Yu have a bad night?

  I mighta done. Now whut’s all this ruckus about, Belle?

  It’s them devil injuns, sheriff! They’re jest at it alla time!

  We caint git no peace! squawks an ancient hunchbacked granny in a hand-sewn cape and slat bonnet, stroking her beard with gnarled spidery fingers. It jest aint natcheral!

  And they fuck dirty, sheriff, says an ugly wall-eyed woman dressed up in a velvet and silk wedding gown, with her fat hairy belly sticking out. Not like decent folk do.

  They like t’stick it in yu all over the place, a scar-faced motherly type with a missing ear explains. Ifn y’aint got enuf holes they make some new ones! And she opens up the front of her dress to show him a few.

  Now, holt on a minnit, mam—!

  And lookit the dirty pitchers they drawed all over my butt! says another, raising her skirts, which look more like window curtains, to show him her hairy behind, vividly decorated with a sacred buffalo-mating effigy. It’s a outrage is whut it is!

  Now dammit, mam, yu jest git covered up thar!

  Yu gotta do sumthin about this dreadful tribulation, sheriff! cries the chanteuse.

  I’m tryin to!

  Us proper ladies jest aint habituated t’sechlike incivil misabuse! cries the tall greasy-haired crone in the housecap. Our inne
rcent little coosies is bein sorely afflicted!

  A sweating one-eyed mestizo lady takes off her pink bonnet to fan her bald head and growls out: Show him, Belle! Show him whut them crool savages done to yu!

  Well, first thing, the barroom singer says, is they hogtied me over a hitchin rail like this! She bends over the rail, her breasts spilling out, and takes hold of her ankles, while some of the other matrons tie her up there with some old frayed rope they’ve found in the street. They toss her black skirts up, tug her drawers down, pinch and palpate her exposed parts, and prod them with their brooms and pot handles.

  Yow! howls Belle, twisting about on the rail in agony, her swaying breasts sweeping the street. This jest aint tasteful, sheriff! This aint how it oughter be!

  He steps down off the porch to bring an end to this dismaying exhibit, but his deputy restrains him and the women push him back up again. Yu pay attention now, sheriff, says a squint-eyed old biddy with handlebars, burying her long warty nose in Belle’s hind cheeks, but dont git too close in. This here is ladyfolk bizness.

  Well jest so nobody dont git hurt here, he says uneasily, and all the women laugh at that, showing the gaps in their yellow teeth.

  Dont want nobody gittin hurt! hoots the one-eyed mestizo lady and, stuffing a black cigar in her stubbly jowls, she rears back and gives Belle’s upraised hindquarters a resounding smack with a butter paddle. The humpbacked granny follows, switching the chanteuse with a handful of wooden splints pulled out of her slat bonnet, and the others join in with whatever they have to hand from gunbelts and frypan spatulas to horsewhips, razor strops, and soup ladles, Belle screaming and yelping with each blow: Oh them dirty heathens! Jest lookit whut they done t’me, sheriff!

  Some of the women now have their skirts up and are slapping at their victim’s exposed behind with their own nether persons as though to parody the savages’ final indignities, and Belle is groaning and grunting and sobbing something heartwrenching. A most perturbatious sight t’behold, remarks his deputy, unbuckling his gunbelt and stepping down off the porch.

  Awright, awright, dammit! he yells. I git the pitcher. His deputy is already down in the hot street, half his fat bum on view, but he pulls up short and turns back, holding his pants up with both pudgy fists. So whuddayu spect me t’do about it?

  We want a little lawr’n order round here, sheriff! croaks the squint-eyed old bird with the unholy nose, still whumping away bowlegged at the chanteuse’s backside, her thick bloomers around her scrawny ankles, the tips of her handlebar mustache rising and falling with her movements like greased raven wings. We want justice! Ungh! We want some—whoof!—dead injuns!

  All the womenfolk take up the cry for blood and justice, rattling their pans and broomsticks and firing off hidden pistols, raising a grave agitation. He figures it’s about time to retire from this line of work and is fumbling with his badge when his deputy, buckling up, hollers out: Enuffa this pussywailin, yu ole scuzbags! Jest holt on t’yer britches thar’n let the sheriff’n me parlay a minnit! And he drags him into the jailhouse doorway and whispers dankly: I reckon it’s high time t’call fer a posse, sheriff.

  He nods, sighs. Not much choice. The badge won’t come off. Snagged on something. As is he. How it is out here on the edge of things. He remembers something he once saw on a suicide’s tombstone in Boot Hill, some Boot Hill: HE COME OUT HERE TO BE HIS OWN MAN BUT HE COULDNT NEVER DO NUTHIN THET WARNT NEEDFULL UNTIL HE DONE THIS AND IT WARNT NEED-FULL NEITHER. TOO BAD. RIP. He turns and, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, faces the crowd. The womenfolk are all gone, except for the dancehall chanteuse, who is still hogtied over the hitching rail, and the street is full of men and horses.

  We’re rarin t’go, sheriff!

  Yippee! Lets git humpin!

  He would, for he’s obliged, he knows, but can’t. Sorry, boys, yu’ll hafta go off without me, he says.

  Caint do thet, sheriff. Aint a proper posse without yu.

  Well too bad. Caint do nuthin about it.

  Sheriff aint got a hoss, boys, his deputy explains.

  No? Whutsamatter with him then?

  I thought he wuz sposed t’ride the white stallion.

  Thet’s right, whar is thet fastuous critter? Go brang it to him, deppity.

  The prospect of seeing the white stallion again, and moreover of mounting it, enlivens him and somewhat reconciles him to riding out with the scalping party. The animal looks a bit different in the sunlight, however, more like an old swayback mule in truth, though at least it’s white. No tack, not even a saddle or a bridle, just a piece of rope looped around its knobbly withers. Takes him a couple of tries to get seated, and by the time he’s accomplished it the posse is nothing but a puff of dust out on the far horizon. He gives the decrepit old thing a sharp spur in the flanks and they lumber off in that general direction.

  Yu take keer now, sheriff hon! the chanteuse calls out from between her legs as he plods past her, her milk-white arse aglow in the noonday sun. All us righteous folk is leanin on yu!

  Shore. Watch yu dont git blistered up, he says.

  His old mount must have a short leg. No matter how many times he points its nose away, the town is always over there to his right like they’re circling it. Or rather, like they’re on the rim of some wheel and the town’s the hub, for it keeps rotating with his own sluggish progress, showing him always the same distant view of the chanteuse’s tiny glowing butt over the hitching rail in front of the jailhouse, nailed there like a WANTED poster. A most desolate and desolating sight, that pitiful town, clumped there on the vast empty plain like debris blown together by a passing wind, but it won’t go away. Finally, having long since lost sight of the posse and weary of jerking on the rope and kicking the beast beneath him, he gives it over to a peculiarity of the landscape and continues on whatever way this sullen creature means to take him. Once, when he was still alone out on the desert (it comes back to him now, it was either before or after he shot his mustang), he came upon the skeletal ruins of an old covered wagon lying on its side, half buried in the sand. There were only a few tatters of canvas left, no cadaverous remains or abandoned chattel; it had been picked clean long ago. What was memorable about it, though, was that one of the spoked wooden wheels was still slowly turning in the dead air, round and round, as though recalling the clocking of time when there was time. He’d sat there for some time in the saddle, staring at that grinding wheel as if to stop it with his thoughts and so bring this misadventure to an end, but the longer he watched it the further he seemed to be from it, until it wasn’t there anymore and he was moving along again and that town over there was shimmering on the horizon, imitating a destination.

  Now, as he winds round it, he hears gunfire, hallooing, the thudding of hoofbeats up ahead, though there’s nothing to be seen to account for it, whatever it is evidently obscured by a slight rise in the land which he hasn’t noticed before. As they trudge up it, it seems to deflate, collapsing back to level flats once more and revealing an old wooden shack all shot to splinters, an old fellow sprawled on the ground in front of it. He pushes his sluggardly rackabones up to where the old man is lying, or maybe it goes there by itself, and he leans over and asks him if he’s all right.

  Shore, he groans. I been shot in sixteen places, they’ve cut off my arm’n et it, I got a permanent part in my hair now down t’my neckbone and a arrow up my arse, why shouldnt I be awright, yu dumb two-laigged jackass?

  Oh, well, thet’s awright then. I thought yu might be ailin, he says, leaning back, having captured a whiff of the old codger’s reek. He appears to be the prospector type, a filthy eviscerated buckskin bag around his neck no doubt once meant for gold dust, his clothes a patchwork of old rags bound by a belt of rope, his face just a dirty beard with eyeholes in it, squinting up at him into the sun from under the turned-up brim of his soft slouched hat.

  Them’s purty fancy duds yu’re sportin, podnuh, he says, all them thar fringes’n tassels’n porkypine quills, yu look tartier than one a them dand
ified joolbox coffins from out the east, which I sorely wisht I had now fer my imminent layin out in.

  They aint mine. They wuz give t’me.

  Do tell. A shudder ripples through his prostrate body, if it’s not vermin in his clothes. And them gaudy shootin irons, he gasps when the shudder passes, kin yu use em or are they jest fer showin off?

  I kin use em. Ifn I hafta.

  Well yu’re a sight fer sore eyes, sonny, I mean thet literal. Even hurtin as I am most elsewhars, thet bedazzlin white tengallon a yer’n plumb makes my eyes ache. Dont tell me—yu must be one a the good ole boys.

  Caint rightly say. I aint one t’take sides.

  The old fellow cackles drily at that and then breaks into a spasm of hollow chest-raking coughing, bouncing about on the hard ground like a Mexican jumping bean. Aw shit, he whimpers when he can and shakes his head and some sort of muck leaks out his ears. And whar’d yu git thet big white stallion, kid? Thought all them critters wuz wholly extincted. He turns his head and sends some dark spit out through the hole in his beard. Yu wanta sell it? Give yu a thousand bucks fer it.

  Thet’s a purty decent offer.

  Hafta be on credit a course. Sumbitchin outlaw rustlers tuck everthin I got. I wuz holed up thar in my cabin in a all-day firefight standin off hunderds of em. It were mighty festive fer a time. I musta plugged fifty a them lowdown sneakthief claim-jumpin desperadoes afore I burnt up all my munitions, hadta rassle barehand with the last of em; thet’s when them savages et my arm’n stuck alla these here knives in me. But ifn I’da had another gun at my side we mighta whupped them consarned butt-fuckin no-good rannahans. So whut tuck yu so long gittin here, podnuh?