Ghost Town: A Novel

by Coover, Robert

  I thought yu wuz boltin off inta the sunset.

  Dont seem t’be thet time a day. Anyhow, I reckon I caint go jest yet.

  Now yu’re talkin, sweetie. I knowed yu couldnt leave me. C’mon! I still got thet silk’n velvet gown with all them buttons and almost nuthin spilt on it. Lets git goin!

  Y’know, what gits me, says the chanteuse, gazing down upon the town, laid out below in parallel lines as though to lend conviction that it is somewhere, is how sad it is, settin thar like a speck in the middle a nuthin. And how grand.

  Peculiar, more like, he says. They have arrived at a bluff overlooking the town, a prominence he had not noticed before. Dont see nobody movin down thar.

  Thet’s jest cuzza us bein up so high.

  We aint so high I caint read the saloon sign nor see the curtain hangin in yer winder.

  And aint it a purty sight! She reaches over and clasps his buck-skinned thigh. He can also see the gallows, which, like the rest of the town, is presently unoccupied, a relief to him because he was afraid a day might have passed in their coming here and he might be too late. Unless it’s already the day after. Caint wait t’git back inta my own satin sheets. She sighs, giving his leg an eager squeeze. It aint in my maidenly nature t’be livin rough.

  Belle, he says, they’s sumthin I gotta talk t’yu about.

  Only one thing though, darlin: I aint sharin my bed with thet damned hoss.

  Well thet’s jest it. Yu wont hafta do.

  Course not. But lookie thar!

  Down below, the streets are now full of diminutive figures running about in an aimless frenzy like a colony of ants whose nest has been poked. They scramble in and out of buildings, dash across streets, fall off rooftops and out of windows, whirl, roll, and tumble, and though it all happens in a heavy midday silence, he realizes that they must be shooting at each other. Yes, he can see flashes now, puffs of smoke. And then the sound does reach them: a series of stuttery little pops like strings of firecrackers going off.

  I’d say thet’s a town desprit fer a sheriff, the chanteuse remarks. I jest hope they aint shot the parson.

  The dead are dragged away or carried off by buzzards and the figures vanish, though the pops continue for a time before also dying away. Then the buildings shift about like wagers on a faro table, the bank moving over to where the saloon was, the saloon replacing the church now sliding into the center next to the stables, the claims office and the jailhouse changing places either side of the general store, and so on, until the entire town layout has been reset. The streets are empty and silence reigns as before. He feels he has just witnessed something vital but he does not know what it is, nor can he fix his mind wholly upon it, so assailed is it by dire apprehensions about a certain person and the danger she is in. Dont fret about no parson, Belle, he says. I aint stayin. They’s sumthin I gotta attend to. And then I’ll be movin on.

  Suddenly the figures reappear in the streets below, scampering, rolling, and falling about as before, scribbling their miserable fates on the town’s dusty tablet, and a moment later the stutter of pops resumes, tattooing the desert air. He is not certain how he will manage what he has to do, but the simplest and boldest thing would be just to ride down there, pick her up, put her on his horse, and ride away, and he supposes it’s what he’ll do, or try to do. If she’ll allow him. There’s a fierce principled streak in her that can get in the way of amiable intentions. He envisions the struggle, and his lips twitch involuntarily into a half smile. Whut’s she got that I aint got twice of? asks the chanteuse flatly, her voice hardening.

  He presses his lips together, feeling like someone’s just peeked at his hand in a poker showdown. It aint thet. The little figures below withdraw and the streets are cleared and the buildings slide about once more as though trying to solve some puzzle. It’s jest she aint no hoss thief, and I caint let her die fer thet.

  Hmmph, says Belle in the silence that returns. Her tasseled sombrero has been tipped back onto her shoulders and her orange hair is blazing in the sun like her whole head’s on fire. Thet harpy is homely as a fencepost and friendly as a dead cat and she aint even bowlaigged enuf t’set a hoss proper. Ifn it wuz me they wuz hangin, yu’da been long gone, wouldnt yu, handsome?

  She’s differnt, Belle. He remembers her as he first saw her, framed in the schoolhouse window, her dark hair coiled into a tight bun, so very pale and beautiful and staring out at him as if to instruct him by gaze alone on the ways of the universe and the means for quelling the spirits of evil in the human heart. She’s kindly and reefined and pure as a angel. She caint think a wicked thought.

  Damn her eyes. She’s a prissy bitch with a cob stuck purely up her reefined angel ass. I caint stand the proud uppish way she talks, struttin her book larnin. Whut’s sumbody like her doin out here anyhow? The chanteuse pauses to collect her breath, which is coming in short furious gasps. There is a look on her face that reminds him of his mustang just before he shot him. Well jest dont yu fergit, cowboy. Yu made a promise.

  He sighs. This is not turning out as he’d imagined it. He’d even thought that Belle might help him. Aint no witnesses t’thet promise, Belle.

  No? How many folks yu reckon is down thar?

  They are dashing about through the streets again in their hats and batwing chaps, shooting at each other, diving for cover, appearing on the tops of things only to fall off them, the buzzards as usual hovering shaggily above like bald black-jacketed croupiers, surveying the action, waiting to gather in the winnings. The thin puppety-pop code of distant gunfire rises as the agitation diminishes and the streets empty out, and then it dies, too. I dunno, he says, as the little buildings rearrange themselves around the gallows again. A goodly number, I spose. They dont stand still long enuf t’count.

  Well however many, sweetiepie, thet’s how many witnesses I got.

  The streets of the town below are empty and silent as before and hotly burnished by the noonday sun. Into them on a coal-black horse now rides a lone figure all outfitted in black with silver spurs and six-shooters and a gold ring in one ear. It is he. A man on a mission. The chanteuse has left him in anger and disgust, or seems to have done, nothing he could do about that, and here he is. From under the broad brim of his slouch hat he warily watches, feeling watched, the windows and rooftops, the corners of things. Expecting trouble. The mare seems edgy too, rolling her head fretfully, biting at the bit. Well, she’s an outlaw horse, has likely never set hoof in this town before except on illegal business; she probably has good reason for unease.

  In the center of town across from the saloon, a potbellied mestizo with a missing ear and a tall squint-eyed man with droopy handlebars and a bald head tattooed with hair are testing the trapdoor of the gallows, using a noosed goat, not by the appearance of it for the first time. Yo, sheriff! the man with the tattooed hair calls out, dragging the goat into position. Howzit hangin?

  He nods at them and watches the limp goggle-eyed goat drop, then walks the mare cautiously over to the jailhouse. So he’s the sheriff again. Yes, he’s wearing his silver badge once more, the one with the hole in it. That explains the sharp tug in the breast he’s felt since turning his back on the inviting horizon and riding back to town again. Shines out on his black shirt in a way it never did before.

  There’s a poster outside the jailhouse door announcing the high noon hanging on the morrow, with a portrait of the schoolmarm staring sternly out at all who would dare stare back. He is shaken by the intensity of her gaze, and the pure gentle innocence of it, and the rectitude, and he knows he is lost to it.

  He hitches the mare to the rail there, and though she is skittish and backs away, her eyes rolling, tugging at her tether, he needs her for what he must next do. He unhooks his rifle from the saddle horn. I’ll jest be a minnit and then we’ll hightail it outa here, he says softly, stroking her sweaty neck to calm her, and he enters the jailhouse ready for whatever happens.

  But the jailhouse is empty, nobody in there except an old codger with an
eyepatch, slumped in the wooden swivel chair, wearing a deputy’s badge on his raggedy red undershirt. There is a thick gully of scar running through his gray beard, down which a trickle of tobacco juice dribbles, and his lone eye is red with drink. Hlo, sheriff, he drawls, trying to stand. Glad yu’re back. Yu’re jest in time t’hang thet rapscallious hoss thief yerself. He chortles, then falls back into the swivel chair, takes a swig from a whiskey bottle, belches, offers it out. Yer health, sheriff!

  Whar is she? he says.

  The prizner? They tuck her over t’the saloon t’shuck her weeds offn her’n scrub her down afore her hangin.

  The saloon?

  Yup, well they got soap’n water over thar and plentya hep in spiffyin her up. The boys wuz plannin t’rub her down good with goose grease’n skunk oil after, polish her up right properlike. He’s already at the door and there’s a pounding in his temples that’s worse than snakebite. Hey, hole up, sheriff! Ain’t thet a outlaw hoss out thar?

  Mebbe. I’ll check into it. Yu stay here’n keep yer workin eye on thet whuskey bottle.

  I aim to.

  The mare is wild-eyed and frothing, rearing against her hitching rope, so he lets her go. Stay outa sight, he whispers to her as he unties her. This wont take long. I’ll whistle yu when we’re set t’bust out. The horse hesitates, pawing the ground, whinnying softly, but he slaps her haunches affectionately, and, glancing back over her shoulder at him, she slips away into the shadows behind the jailhouse.

  The object of his quest is not in the saloon either. It’s quiet in there, four men playing cards, a couple more at the bar, a puddle of water in the middle of the floor where a bucket of soapy water stands, a lacy black thing ripped up and hung over its lip. The men at the bar are laughing and pointing at the bucket or else at the wet long-handled grooming brush beside it. Thet goddam humpback! one of them says, hooting.

  Hlo, sheriff, grins the bartender, a dark sleepy-eyed man of mixed breed with half a nose. Welcum back. Whut’s yer pizen?

  An argument breaks out at the card table, the air fills with the slither of steel flashing free of leather, shots ring out, and a tall skinny man with spidery hair loses most of his jaw and all else besides, slamming against the wall with the impact before sliding in a bloody heap to the floor. Looks like they’s a chair open fer yu, sheriff, says the thin little bespectacled man who shot him, tucking his smoking derringer back inside his black broadcloth coat. Set yer butt down and study the devil’s prayerbook a spell.

  I aint a sportin man. Whut’s happened t’the prizner?

  Yu mean thet dastardly hoss thief? Haw. Caint say. He aims a brown slather of juice at a brass spittoon, and it crashes there, making the spittoon rattle on its round bottom like a gambling top. She might could be over t’doc’s fer a purjin so’s t’git her cleaned up inside as smart as out, though after her warshin in here, I misdoubt she needs it.

  The others snort and hoot at this. Naw, I think doc musta awready seed her, declares the barkeep, a toothpick stabbed into a gap between his tobacco-stained teeth. He was in here shortly sniffin his finger.

  Probly then, laughs another, they tuck her up t’the schoolhouse fer a paddlin.

  Whut’s thet got t’do with bein a hoss thief?

  Nuthin. It’s jest fer fun. Give the jade summa her own back. And they all whoop again and slap the bar and table.

  He pushes out through the swinging doors, his blood pounding in his ears and eyes. Can’t recollect where the doctor lives, if he ever knew, so he heads for the schoolhouse. On his way over, he hears a banging noise coming from a workshop back of the feed store. It’s a lanky hairy-faced carpenter knocking out a pine coffin. Howdy, sheriff, he says, lifting the coffin up on its foot. Jest gittin ready t’eut the lid. Inside, on the bottom, there is a crude line drawing of a stretched-out human figure, no doubt done by tracing around a person lying there. One of the faces from the hanging posters has been cut out and pasted in the outline of the head, and nails have been driven in where the nipples would be. The arms go only to the elbows (probably her hands were folded between the nails), but the legs are there in all their forked entirety. I reckon it should oughter fit her perfect. Whuddayu think?

  I think yu should oughter burn it.

  The schoolhouse is not where he remembered it either. Instead, he comes on a general dry goods and hardware store in that proximate neighborhood and he stops in to ask if she’s been seen about.

  Sheriff! Whar yu been? cries the merchant, a round bandy-legged fellow with a black toupee and his nose pushed into his red face. They’s been a reglar plague a hell-raisin bandits pilin through here since yu been gone! Jest lookit whut they done t’my store! Shot up my winders, killt my staff, stole summa my finest goods, ‘n splattered blood’n hossshit on all the rest! Yu gotta do sumthin about this! Whut’s a sheriff fer ifn honest folk caint git pertection!

  Thet’s a question I aint got a clear answer to, he says, staring coldly into the fat merchant’s beady eyes. Right now I’m tryin t’locate a missin prizner.

  Whut, yu mean thet ornery no-account barebutt picaroon? She aint missin. Yer boys wuz by here a time ago with her, plain cleaned me outa hosswhips’n ax handles; she wuz in fer a grand time. I think they wuz makin fer the stables. Yu know. Scene a the crime. He turns to leave, but the merchant has a grip on his elbow and a salacious grin on his round red face. I gotta tell yu, sheriff, I seen sumthin when they brung her by I aint never seed before. He glances over his shoulder with one eye, the other winking, and leans toward him, his cold fermented breath ripe with the stink of rot and mildew. She wuz—huh! yu know, he snickers softly in his ear. She wuz cryin!

  He tears free from the merchant’s greasy grip and strides out the door onto the wooden porch, his spurs ringing in the midday hush. He pauses there to stare out upon the dusty town. No sign of them. They could be anywhere. There’s a dim shadowy movement over in the blacksmith’s shed, but that’s probably his horse pacing about. He should just go back to the jailhouse and wait for them. But then the white church steeple beckons him. She gave him a Bible once, he recalls. They’ll have to take her there sooner or later if she wants to go, and she surely will. There’s probably a law about it.

  He is met inside the church doors by the parson, or a parson, standing in a black frock coat behind a wooden table with a Bible on it, a pair of ivory dice (REPENT, says a tented card beside them, AFORE YU CRAP OUT!), a pistol, and a collection plate. Howdo, sheriff, he says, touching the brim of his stovepipe hat. He’s a tall ugly gold-toothed man with wild greasy hair snaking about under the hat and a drunkard’s lumpy nose, on the end of which a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles is perched like two pans of a gold-dust balance. Welcum t’the house a the awmighty. Yu’re jest in time fer evenin prayers!

  I aint here fer prayin. I’m lookin fer a missin prizner.

  Y’mean thet jezebel hoss thief? She gone missin? A leather flap behind the parson blocks his view, but he can hear the churchgoers carrying on inside, hooting and hollering in the pietistical way. Well she’s probly in thar, ever other sinner is.

  Thanks, revrend, he says, and heads on in, but the parson grabs him by the elbow. The pistol is cocked and pointed at his ear. Whoa thar, brother. I caint let yu go in without payin.

  I tole yu, I aint here fer the preachin, I’m on sheriffin bizness.

  Dont matter. Yu gotta put sumthin in the collection plate or I caint let yu by.

  I aint got no money, he says firmly, staring down the gun barrel. And I’m goin in thar.

  Dont hafta be money, says the parson, keeping the pistol pointed at his head but letting go of his elbow to tug at his reversed collar so as to give his Adam’s apple more room to bob. Them sporty boots’ll do.

  No. Gonna need them boots. If he just walked on in, would the preacher shoot him in the back? He might.

  Well how about thet thar beaded black-haired scalp then?

  He hesitates. He doesn’t know why he wears it. For good luck, maybe. Like a rabbit’s paw. But he�
��s not superstitious. And it doesn’t even smell all that good. Awright, he says, and he cuts it off his gunbelt with his bowie knife and tosses it in the collection plate, where it twists and writhes for a moment before curling up like a dead beetle.

  Now I’ll roll yu fer them boots, ifn yu’re of a mind fer it, grins the parson goldenly, picking up the dice and rattling them about in his grimy knob-knuckled hand, but he pushes on past him under the flap into the little one-room church, the preacher calling out behind him: I’m sorely beseechin the good Lawd thet yu localize thet snotnose gallows bird, sheriff! Dont wanta lose her at the last minnit and set all hell t’grievin!

  Veiled gas lamps hang from blackened beams in the plank-walled room, the air hazy with smoke and smelling of stale unwashed bodies and the nauseous vapors of the rotgut whiskey—drunk, undrunk, and regurgitated—being served like communion from boards set on pew backs. Hanging in the thick smoke like audible baubles are the ritual sounds of ringing spittoons, dice raining upon craps tables, the clink of money, soft slap of cards, the ratcheting and ping of fortune wheels and slot machines, the click click click of the roulette ball, and, amid the zealous cries of the high rollers, oaths are being sworn and glasses smashed and pistols fired off with a kind of emotional abandon. Are yu all down, gentamin? someone hollers, and another cries out: Gawd-awmighty, smack me easy! Somewhere in the church, behind all the smoke and noise, he can hear the saloon chanteuse singing about a magical hero with a three-foot johnnie, now hung and gone to glory, her voice half smothered by the thick atmosphere. Sweat-stained hats hang in parade on hooks along the walls under doctrinal pronouncements regarding spitting and fair dealing, rows of decapitated animal heads, dusty silvered mirrors which reflect nothing, and religious paintings of dead bandits and unclothed ladies in worshipful positions, but the only sign anywhere of the one he’s looking for is one of the posters announcing tomorrow’s hanging nailed up over a faro table, the portrait obscenely altered. BUCK THE TIGER! it says, and a crude drawing shows where and how to do so.