Ghost Town: A Novel

by Coover, Robert

  The old graybeard comes thumping back, and though he twists and kicks and bucks, they succeed in fitting him out in Belle’s glossy drawers, tight as they are on him, the old fellow holding him down while the younger one ties up the little ribbons at the knees into bows. Haw! Aint he cute!

  Yu got them things on him fore t’aft, deppity, remarks the chanteuse, flouncing the ruffles on her gown. His bizness is hangin out.

  They wouldnt go on tother way, Belle. We’da hadta shove his doodads up inside him. But it’s awright. Saves time later on.

  Yu my deppity? he asks the peglegged oldtimer.

  Shore, sheriff, he says, buckling the gunbelt around his middle, while the other fellow works his boots on him. Dont yu reckanize me?

  He had a rough time out thar on the desert.

  Musta done.

  Okay, port him on down, boys, I’m ready’n rarin!

  Wait a minnit! Ifn yu’re my deppity, I got a order t’give yu—

  Later, sheriff, grimaces the old man, tobacco juice leaking down his beard like a muddy creek, and they plant his white hat on him and lift him by his armpits off the bed and on out the door. Right now the party’s bilin up’n I’m dry as a dry desert bone.

  As they drag him out onto the landing, they are met with a jubilant roar from the wedding guests below, followed by a piano roll, bottle banging, and shouted commentary, punctuated by loud whistling, on his marriage costume. His deputy reaches up and doffs his hat for him. The saloon is decorated entirely in white with pale streamers made from bleached rags and catalog paper looping from beam to beam, gauzy muslin festoons over the windows, bar, and swinging doors, white paper flowers on all the gambling tables, an ejaculatory scatter of white poker chips, and, hanging from the streamers, beams, and festoons, hundreds upon hundreds of tinkling white sticks, which he discovers upon being bumped by a few on his way down the stairs to be bones, whittled into the shapes of people and animals, mostly in copulating postures. Even the spittoons have been whitewashed for the occasion. Over behind the snow-white grand piano, leg and arm bones have been log-cabined into an arch around the big wheel of fortune, turning it into a kind of wedding altar, with the pooltable ROUND BALLS AND STRAIGHT CUES! sign tacked up inside and finer bones carved to resemble privy body parts dangling like a fringe from the top of the arch.

  His presumed bride, her breasts on view and looking radiant, is passing among her guests, collecting hugs and kisses, compliments, bottom slaps and pinches, shots of whiskey, and well-wishes of the generally suggestive sort, as well as pouches of gold dust, which she stuffs down her bosom. Wedding gifts, he assumes, or else winnings from a bet, no doubt the one he’s lost, a remark he makes to his deputy, who says: Naw, sheriff. Haw. It’s fer yer weddin night. She’s chargin admission.

  They aint gonna be nuthin t’see, he grumps, and the deputy laughs at that, showing the gaps in his tobacco-stained teeth.

  She did tell us it might be sumthin of a skin game, he says.

  This un’s fer yu, darlin! calls out the chanteuse, perching herself knees-up on the piano, whereupon the piano player, an earless pipe-smoking mestizo in white pajamas, strikes up a tune, and she sings him a love song about busting an unbustable bronc, the men who have hoisted him down here holding him up in front of the exuberant assembly in his buckskin shirt and gaping pink bloomers like an illustration. Not of an unbustable bronc—he’s shriveled up with pain and chagrin, his wrists are still bound, his legs leaden and useless, his heart’s in his boots—but of the unsavory consequences of excess civilizing. After that excitement, the preacher sets his bowler on his bald head, bangs his Bible on the bar, and calls them all forward to the tall wheel of fortune: Brang some chairs and take yer seats, gents! The blessed cerymonies is about t’commensurate!

  Chairs and tables scrape on the wooden floor. The pajama’d mestizo, puffing away on his cob pipe, bangs out a kind of march tune which sounds like a horse race or else a runaway train, while he’s dragged up to be stood alongside Belle. Hlo, handsome, she whispers and tweaks his more exposed features. There’s a preparatory chorus throughout the saloon of throat-clearing and spitting, belching, farting, and what’s either praying or cursing, and then the preacher hawks up a glomeration that rings a whitewashed spittoon a few yards away and announces: Hiyo, dear brothers and sister, we are foregathered here in most dreadful and holy joy t’harness up the sheriff to our beloved Belle, and so set him in the softest saddle in the whole damn Terrortory as I’m shore yu’ll all concur!

  The men shout and cheer and stamp their feet—Aymen t’thet, parson! Praise be!—and the chanteuse blushes and smiles coyly at them over her shoulder. Then she takes his near hand and claps it to her hip and says, I do! I do!

  Hole on, sugarbun, says the preacher, lowering his monocle. We aint t’thet part a the proceedins yet.

  Well hurry it up, revrend, she cries. I’m jest gushin out all over! And she wheels round to plant a kiss on him, throwing one leg over his bloomered hipbone and rubbing herself there, setting off a burst of hooting and whistling and the wild smashing of bottles against the white-sheeted walls.

  His bad leg buckles under her weight, and the top-hatted bumpkin, holding him up with his one arm, grunts: Brace up yer carkiss, sheriff! Show a little brass’n grit thar, like whut yu’re famous fer.

  I aint famous fer nuthin, he gasps as the parson pulls the chanteuse off him and helps her smooth her skirts out. Cept locatin trouble mebbe.

  Haw. Yu’re a card, sheriff, says his deputy, spitting voluminously on the floor and stomping it with his pegleg as though it were something alive. I think yu musta overdid it at yer stag party.

  Whut stag party?

  Yer stag party. Y’know, on accounta gittin spliced.

  But I aint had no stag party.

  Wait a minnit, says the other fellow. Yu aint had no stag party?

  Whut’s this? asks the parson, adjusting the monocle in his eye.

  The sheriff, says the deputy. He aint had no stag party!

  This causes a general consternation and the chanteuse, looking a bit desperate, says: It dont matter! He kin have one tomorra! He kin have a whole dang slew of em!

  Now Belle, he caint git married without a stag party, says his deputy. Them’s the rules.

  Aw shit, says Belle glumly, and she kicks over a white spittoon with such vehemence she sets all the little bones in the place to rattling.

  Whuddayu figger, revrend? asks the oldtimer.

  I figger we aint got no choice, we gotta stick to the book. But we caint conduct it here, it’s too gaudied up fer sech ornery and ribald carryins on. I reckon we’d best appropriate some potables and hike him over t’the stables. Caint hurt nuthin thar and thet ole sow might still be rootin around sumwhars, firsts ifn we find her.

  The men gather up armloads of bottles from the bar and what’s left of the wedding banquet and, lifting him up on their shoulders, they carry him through the clinking bones toward the swinging doors, while the chanteuse hitches up her wedding gown and stamps furiously back up the stairs toward her room, unleashing a stream of violent imprecations down upon them all.

  Hey wait up, Belle! Whut about our gold dust?

  I’m givin yu sumbitches a rain check, she snaps back.

  But it aint rainin.

  Hell it aint.

  Shit, says one of the men, I wisht sumbody’da tole me thet ole sow wuz dead fore I poked her.

  Whut differnce would it a made?

  Well fer one thing I wouldna tried t’kiss her.

  The men whoof and grunt sourly at that. Reckon I’m gonna hafta have a go at them bloomers, one of them says ominously. Not for the first time. He knows he has to think fast. Hard to think at all, though, nearly knocked his head off coming in here. It was pitch dark and he was mounted on their shoulders and he didn’t see the top of the stable doors coming. Laid him out for a time. Now, his wrists still roped behind him, he’s been sat in a feeding trough and buckled to the upright with his own hand-tooled gunbelt. T
hey’ve been by from time to time to pour cheap whiskey in him and on him and smear him with horseshit and make wedding-night wisecracks, he being the particular guest of honor at this function, but mostly the men of the stag party have been downing the food and liquor themselves, sitting slumped around a kerosene lamp in an empty stall, ragging and joking and talking dirty and swatting at the horseflies and dreaming up grim escapades, often as not involving the bridegroom’s physical person. Which is not in prime condition. His head is pounding, his leg still hurts from his shoulder down from whatever it was happened to him before he ended up in the chanteuse’s wedding drama, and most of the rest of him has been seriously maltreated as well.

  Although he is a man of few spoken words or opinions, his head is ever full of troubled thoughts, and, in spite of the blow it took, it has not lost any of them. He is a drifter and one whose history escapes him even as he experiences it, and yet to drift is to adventure and to overstudy one’s history is to be ruled by it, and he is above all a free man, intent on pursuing his own meaning even if there is none. Or thus he always thought of himself before he forsook his rambling to try his hand here at the sheriff’s life, and though he cannot think now why he did so, he believes it may have had to do with the oppression of loneliness which often attaches itself to freedom like a sickening and also with the presence here of the village schoolmarm, who is a mystery to him and a provocation, as she is to the men huddled around the kerosene lamp, judging by their lurid fantasies about her, now at the center of their conversation. Perhaps, too, it had to do with vanity, a desire for the esteem of others less ephemeral than that won in passing encounters with a gun or his fists. Well, he should be who he is, what trouble he’s in he’s brought on himself by not being so; when he’s got through this misery he should, forgetful as he is, remember that and live by it as best he can, or at least such is his resolution, tied up and stinking there in the horse trough. Sorting it all out has cleared his head somewhat, which, he thinks, is probably why they thought up stag parties in the first place.

  There are a couple of horses down at the far end; he can hear them snorting softly and pawing around. Though he is still crammed into Belle’s skin-tight bloomers, he is also wearing his boots and silver spurs, which, through hard use, his or somebody’s, have been worn to knifelike circles of steel, and it occurs to him he might be able to cut his bonds with them, borrow one of those horses, and ride out of here, if he can just get his good leg under him in the feeding trough. This is not easy, the bad leg mostly getting in the way, and consequently there’s a lot of bumping and banging of steel, bone, and wood, but the men are too drunk and talking too loud about the marm to take much notice. Getting his leg under him is not the only problem. Once it’s there, he recognizes, almost immediately, that it is easier to cut his butt than the ropes. Slowly, though, as he saws back and forth on the spur, he can feel them beginning to fray.

  Whut really gits me, says one of the men, is her eyes. Blue and liquid as a violet’s in the dewy morn, y’know whut I mean? And oh shit, her hair. It’s like sunbeams twisted inta wavin golden curls, the gold I aint never struck out here. I’d like t’fuck thet hair.

  Whuddayu talkin about, yu ole galoot? She aint a blonde. And her eyes aint blue, they’re more like a kinder gray, the color a rain, pale’n clear like yu kin see clean through em. I’d like t’fuck them eyes.

  They’re whutever fuckin color I want em to be, yu wet bag a ratshit. Shet yer lip fore I dissect yer innards and make sausages outa em fer my dawg’s breakfast.

  Yu’n whut other regimunt, buttwipe?

  Hole on, fellers, yu’re both wrong, says another; they’re green. He continues to saw at the ropes binding his wrists, his attention narrowed now to this single task, but they seem almost to be growing back where he’s cut them, only thicker, as if accumulating scar tissue. Her eyes is green like a medder in springtime with flecks a wildflower colors in em and bright like they’s a light inside shinin out, the two of em set in a face whose pale complexion is a most genteel and suptile blend a the lily’n the rose, ifn yu ever seen sech things. And right square in the middle of it all, a perky little nose stickin straight out at yu so delicate and esposed as t’make yer heart weep fer the innercent purity of the sweet angel whut sports it. I’d like t’fuck thet nose.

  Course she aint sweet alla time.

  No, yu’re right thar, her disposition aint always the easiest t’git on with.

  Mosta the time, in fact, sweet aint the word at all.

  And ifn it aint the word, mister, yu better go fer cover, cuz fore yu know it she’ll unleash her upbringin on yu.

  The marm is a formidable unleasher of upbringins.

  Yu aint jest talkin jackshit, podnuh. Wunst I said aint in fronta her and she got me down and warshed my mouth out with lye soap. Thought I’d die a the foamin wet rot.

  She whupped my arse with a yardstick fer near a hour wunst’n all I done wuz t’fuckin split a danged infinnytif.

  Whut’s a infinnytif?

  Durned ifn I know, but round the marm I shore aint lettin on.

  He can feel the rope suddenly giving way at last, just a few strands left uncut, but he has to pause when one of the revelers comes lumbering back into the dark to piss in the trough. It’s the bald-headed preacher with the eye stitched through with a scar. His collar is turned the right way around now, but everything else is on backwards, causing him difficulties at the trough. He’s staggering drunk, doesn’t even seem to see him there. I’d like t’split her infinnytif, he bellows out, letting go above his belt and splattering just about everything except the trough.

  Keerful, podnuh, someone calls out from the circle around the lamp. Yu’re crossin inta perilous country.

  Naw, I mean it, growls the parson, heading back, still dribbling down his leg, to join the others. Some of the rope strands seem to have grown back as tough as tendons and to be feeding on the blood leaking from his sliced behind. There’s no time to lose. Yu wanta know the truth, I’d like t’rassle her down and fuck the bejesus outa her smartass ass.

  Whoa, yu’re talkin bout the schoolmarm, revrend! Yu’re talkin about sumbody pure as the lily a the lake, sumbody as spotless and innercent as a angel in heaven!

  But aint thet the more consarned reason? I mean, we’re out here in the goddam Terrortory, boys, whut’s lilies a the lake got t’do with it? Fuck it! I say we go fer her!

  Them’s mighty brave words, podnuh. I got dibs on seconds. Who’s goin first?

  There’s a prevailing silence around the kerosene lamp, broken finally by a low stuttering fart. Yu volunteerin or whut? someone asks. Nope, nope! Thet one jest slipped out. As do his wrists, the tenacious snarl of bonds defeated at last. He unbuckles the belt, crawls out of the feeding trough, now swarming with writhing rope ends, and, hobbling on his bad leg, makes his way cautiously over to where the horses are. Well, someone says, it’s the sheriff’s fuckin party, lets use him t’break the marm in.

  Aint we already done thet?

  Not as I kin recollect, pard.

  But didnt we—?

  Yu callin me a liar?

  No, no! Yu’re right, I dont recollect neither. Let’s git him.

  This proposal meets with universal approval, expressed in meaty grunts, so he knows he has to keep moving, though moving’s just what’s most hard to do. He feels like he’s wallowing agonizingly through thick mud just to cross the stable, and climbing up on the first horse he comes to is beyond his present abilities. Hey! Whar is he? he hears someone shout. He’s gone! Whut—? A terrible weariness overtakes him and he fears all his heroics may have been for nothing, but the prospect of having to rape the schoolmarm and marry the chanteuse spurs him on, and, sucking air through his mouth, he silently eases the animal out of its stall. Thar he is! Over by the hosses! With the last of his strength he heaves himself headfirst over the horse’s back and, whacking its rump with his hat and gunbelt and screaming like he’s lost his reason, he sends it galloping madly out of the stable
and into the desert night.

  At midday, he’s still limply rag-dolled over the horse, his shredded butt baking in the sun and feasted on by flies. Hurts too much to move it. Hurts all over. His ribs are now as sore as the rest of him after the long frantic gallop out of town, and his back feels like it’s broken. But at least he’s gone from that place. For good, he hopes. About the long night, he remembers little after the shouts and gunfire. Instead, he recalls another night on the desert, long ago, when he was still adrift and in the saddle and had not yet reached the town, which was then nothing more than a teasing irregularity on the daytime horizon. He’d been moseying along for some time and had grown accustomed to the bleak austerity of that horizon and of the empty desert he was crossing, but on this particular night it seemed even more devoid of living feature than usual. Not a single cactus, no Joshua trees, sagebrush, or even scrub. No tum-bleweeds. No water. Just rock and sand, as far as he could see, a vast dead thing spread out all about him beneath the alien immensity of the star-scattered sky, that lifeless beyond beyond this lifeless beyond, where, with what he has of a life, he’d come to. A desolate silence lay upon the stony plain as though compressed and baled and weightily stacked upon it, not so much as a whisper of a wind, nothing but the hollow clocklike clopping of his mustang’s hoofs, he and the horse the only things in all this emptiness that moved.

  Until, as he watched, the stars began to slide about, to realign themselves upon the black canvas of the sky as though to spell out some message for him. A warning maybe. But it was all just a sluggish scramble, like the shuffling of dominoes, nothing he could make any sense of, and he grasped thereby some small portion of his fate: that anything the universe might have to say would remain forever incomprehensible to him. So, well, maybe he could read what they had to say after all.