Killing Mr. Sunday

by Bill Brooks

  the man who shot him growing hot in his head as he

  began planning where exactly he was going to shoot

  the man who shot him: in the spine first, then through

  the neck. Make the sumbitch suffer a little before I

  put out his lights altogether.

  It made him feel some better thinking about how

  he was going to make the man suffer.

  Felt like those invisible dogs had their teeth sunk in

  all the way to the bone and wouldn’t let go.

  Shit fire.

  “Well, now, what do you think of that high and mighty

  son of a bitch just turning his back and walking away

  like we wasn’t any more to him than dog shit?” Zack

  said to his brothers when Jake left them standing there.

  “I think he’s lying to us,” Zeb said. “I think he in-

  tends on collecting that reward for himself.”

  Zane remained quiet, squatting on his heel. His

  head ached from drinking too much the night before

  and the thought of his sins, like God was pressing his

  thumbs into his eye sockets.

  “What do we do now?” Zack asked.

  “I’m thinking,” Zeb said.

  “We could follow him,” Zane said, standing.

  Both his brothers looked at him with surprise.

  “See where he goes, see if he’s got that fellow lo-

  cated somewhere. Might be he’s going there right

  now to arrest him, or kill him and collect the reward

  money.”

  “Guddamn, would you listen to that,” Zeb said.

  “Our little brother’s got his thinking cap on.”

  All Zane wanted was to get it over with so he could

  start confessing his sins, collect the reward money for

  a stake to make a fresh start—get shut forever of his

  brothers. The sooner the better, the way he figured it.

  They stood there for a bit waiting, Zeb saying how

  they’d have to play it cool and not let on they were

  watching the lawman.

  “We might have to fight him over Sunday,” Zack

  said. “You see those double pistols he was wearing

  when he flashed you his badge?”

  “Two-gun man,” Zeb said. “You ever fought a

  two-gun man?”

  “I ain’t never fought one, have you?”

  “I ain’t never fought one, neither, but it don’t make

  monkey shit to me ’cause we got three guns to his

  two.”

  “We’d have had more guns if they hadn’t got stole

  with our horses,” Zack said.

  “Shut your pie hole about them damn stole

  horses!” Zeb was easily irritated by what he consid-

  ered foolish and unnecessary comments. “You wasn’t

  so stupid, we wouldn’t be needing to discuss the

  matter!”

  They waited until the lawman turned a corner then

  began to follow. They came around the same corner

  in time to see him enter a big house then come out

  again. They watched as he walked up the street and

  entered a smaller house and come out again. He

  hadn’t stayed long in either place.

  “I think he’s trying to shuck us off his trail,” Zeb

  said. “Thinks he’s smart by acting like he don’t know

  we’re following him.”

  Fact was, Jake hadn’t noticed the trio until he left

  Clara’s.

  Shit.

  He could think of only one thing to do and he did it.

  Sam Toe was picking the feet of a horse when Jake

  arrived.

  “Got that gelding saddled?”

  “Inside the stable,” Sam Toe said, pointing with

  his hoof knife.

  The Stone brothers stopped a block short of the stables.

  “Now what?” Zack said. “Look’s like he’s getting

  ready to ride out.”

  “What’d you do with them damn horses we stole

  off that woman?” Zeb said.

  Zack shrugged. Both he and Zeb looked at Zane.

  “I put them in that corral.”

  They saw the lawman ride out leading the stolen

  horses.

  “Where the hell’s he headed now?” Zeb said, his

  voice a whine of irritation.

  They watched him ride off onto the grasslands.

  “Shit fire!” Zack said. “He’s got to know they

  been stole and is taking them back to that woman.”

  “We should have just gone on and killed her.”

  They again turned their attention to the youngest

  brother.

  “See what you did now?”

  “Oh go to hell,” Zane said. “He may know they’re

  stolen but he don’t know who stole ’em.”

  “He will soon enough,” Zack said. “Then he’ll

  come back here looking for us.”

  “Since when has you sons of bitches been afraid of

  anybody?” Zane asked.

  “Shit, since never,” Zeb said. “Who gives a fuck

  what she tells him. We find that Sunday, we’ll kill him

  and get in the wind. And if we don’t find him before

  that marshal gets back, well, it’s his poor luck, cause

  we’ll kill him, too.”

  Jake was hoping the men would follow him, but when

  he got a mile out he stopped and waited and when

  they didn’t come, he circled back. Those bounty

  hunters would find William Sunday as easy as a fox

  finds chickens; it was just a matter of time.

  William Sunday stood in the parlor of the big

  house waiting for the marshal to return. He was

  dressed in his best suit, one he’d purchased for just

  this occasion. He looked at the fine woodwork of the

  house. It was a good house. Clara would enjoy living

  in it. He noticed, too, that the pain in him wasn’t so

  bad even though he hadn’t taken a drop of laudanum

  in the last hour. He’d heard that when a man’s time

  gets very close all the pain and suffering go out of

  him, he becomes at peace.

  An old lawman turned gambler he once knew in

  Hays told him on his deathbed: “Bill, whatever it is

  killing me don’t hurt no more. I don’t know why it

  don’t hurt, it just don’t. If this is anything like what

  death feels like, then I’m ready for it,” and closed his

  eyes almost as soon as he said it and went into that

  long forever sleep.

  William Sunday had never given much thought to

  God and the afterlife until lately. Seemed strange for a

  man to live so short a time then die and be forgotten

  as though he’d never lived at all. None of it made any

  sense. But then, the opposite argument never carried

  much weight with him, either. He recalled saying one

  night as the laudanum started to carry him to that

  strange place how he’d like to believe—talking to

  himself aloud—but that unless he heard a voice

  speaking to him that very moment, how the hell was

  he supposed to believe in the ghostly world? He heard

  no voice.

  He thought of it—dying—as about like stepping

  through a door and finding nothing on the other side

  except space and darkness awaiting him.

  Space and darkness.

  I never been afraid of nothing, till now.

  He heard the turn of a doorknob coming from the

 
back. Slipped out his pistols wishing it could have

  ended the way he wanted. Stood there waiting, waiting.

  Jake called out to him.

  “It’s just me.”

  He eased the guns back into their pockets, grateful

  it would end the way he’d planned it instead of on

  someone else’s terms.

  “Thought you had to be someplace and weren’t

  coming back until tonight like we agreed.”

  “Plans have changed. I was hoping to lead those

  bounty hunters on a chase, shake them once we got

  far enough out of Sweet Sorrow. Thing is, they didn’t

  take the bait. They’re still in town and I’m guessing

  looking hard for you this very moment.”

  “Then let’s let them find me.”

  “You still want to go through with it?”

  “I don’t see any other way. It’s them or this thing

  eating my insides.”

  “Okay, then. You set?”

  “Ready as I’m ever going to be.”

  “Let’s go out the back.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Skinny Dick’s defunct saloon was as stonily silent as a

  graveyard. A skin of dust lay everywhere, collected

  from the months of disuse; its boarded windows al-

  lowed only thin blades of light to cut through the nar-

  row spaces of the poor nailed boards. The place had

  been waiting to be sold ever since the killings of

  Skinny Dick and his whore, Mistress Sheba. It hadn’t

  been much of a draw to begin with, and after the

  killings there was nobody to buy it and start over. Spi-

  ders had been busy, the rats, too, looking at the tracks

  and droppings in the dust atop the bar.

  William Sunday coughed and it hurt some.

  “Pick your spot,” Jake said.

  The gunfighter looked around, saw a table and

  three chairs around it along one wall just opposite the

  front doors and went and sat in one of the chairs so he

  had a good view of anyone coming in, but sat enough

  in the shadows that whoever came in wouldn’t see

  him immediately.

  “I don’t suppose this old drinking house has a

  drink in it?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “It got pilfered pretty good of any liquor once

  word got around Skinny Dick wasn’t guarding it any-

  more with a gun.”

  The regulator clock above the bar had stopped

  due to no one to wind it. Its black hands stood

  frozen at two-thirty.

  “Quiet in here,” William Sunday said.

  Jake stood waiting.

  “If you would be so kind as to get this started,

  Marshal, I’d appreciate it. I doubt my respite from the

  pain is going to last very much longer.”

  “You sure this is how you want it? No doubts?”

  The gunfighter nodded as he took out his pocket

  pistols and set them on the table in front of him. He

  took also a thick cigar and lighted it before blowing a

  stream of smoke.

  “This is how I want it. My death, my terms.”

  Jake approached him, extended his hand, and said,

  “Good luck to you, then.”

  “Let’s hope those boys are all good shots, for I

  know I am.”

  Jake turned and walked out the front doors, left

  them standing open like an invitation. The light fell in

  through them about as wide as a man’s body and lay

  there on the dusty floor and William Sunday watched

  it knowing it would move an inch at a time either far-

  ther into the room or in retreat, depending on the way

  the world was turning.

  The gunman sat and smoked and waited.

  31

  Big Belly rode into Sweet Sorrow as if he’d just

  bought the place. Hardly anyone on the streets paid

  him any attention. A few dogs came out and barked,

  then got distracted and went off barking at something

  else that interested them. Some kids played with a

  metal hoop, pushing it along with a stick. A man in

  an apron stood outside a store sweeping the walk.

  He rode past a storefront that had boxes in the

  window that white men buried their dead in, and past

  another store that had little hats with feathers in the

  window. He rode past a corral that had a few horses

  in it and a man beating hell out of a horseshoe with a

  hammer that rang so sharply it hurt Big Belly’s ears.

  White men were the noisiest bastards ever was.

  He saw a place where he knew white men drank,

  for there were several of them standing out front with

  glasses of beer in their hands, the hats on their heads

  cockeyed, talking to one another in loud voices. He

  decided to pass it up, see if there was another place

  less crowded he might slip in unnoticed and get him-

  self a drink. A block up the street he saw just such a

  place, its doors flung wide and nobody standing out

  front. He reined in, dismounted, and tied up his three

  horses. Took one of the pistols out of the saddle bags

  to use for barter and stuck it in his pants, then tried to

  walk like he wasn’t an Indian, a Comanche Indian,

  but there was only so much he could do with those

  banty bowlegs of his.

  Inside it was dark and dusty and not a single soul

  in sight.

  William Sunday had his pistol aimed at the stranger

  waiting to see what his play was. Watched him as he

  walked bowlegged up to the bar and stood there. Son

  of a bitch must have been sitting horses since he was a

  baby to be that bowlegged.

  Big Belly stood there waiting for someone to come

  and ask him what he wanted. He eased out the pistol

  and laid it atop the bar and waited some more, and

  when no one came, he slapped a palm on the bar rais-

  ing a small cloud of dust that got in his nostrils and

  caused him to sneeze.

  “Hi-ya!” he called. “Wiss-key!” one of the few

  English words he knew.

  It sounded like half grunt and half sneeze and the

  gunfighter was prepared to drop him where he

  stood.

  “Wiss-key!” he yelled again.

  Sunday eased off the trigger; this man wasn’t there

  to kill him, but get a drink. Couldn’t he see the damn

  bar was closed for business?

  Big Belly rocked on the balls of his feet looking up

  and down the bar. Saw a door leading to the back and

  went down to it and tried the handle and when it

  swung open he called again: “Wiss-key!”

  But no one came and he grumbled to himself what

  sort of son of a bitching goddamn two kinds of hell

  was this place where a man couldn’t even trade a good

  pistol for a drink of whiskey?

  He never saw the man sitting in the shadows along

  the wall with a gun pointed at him until it was too

  late.

  Jake found the Stone brothers coming out of Tall

  John’s funeral parlor. They’d been going into every

  business along Main Street asking after a stranger in

  town—had any come in lately? His name is William

  Sunday and he is a notorious killer of children and

  has raped fif
ty white women and shot old men in their

  beds while they slept and so on and so forth. And

  we’re here to put an end to his reign of terror. It was

  Zeb’s idea to make Sunday sound like the devil incar-

  nate and instill fear in the listener hoping to gain

  quick information.

  Tall John saw them for what they were: goddamn

  bounty hunters. What they didn’t know was that he

  knew William Sunday from years back. He had

  buried William Sunday’s wife and the man had pri-

  vately paid him double his going rate for a first-class

  funeral, asking only that he keep it secret that he’d

  done so. William Sunday, shootist—and some said the

  worst type of man there was—never showed the un-

  dertaker anything but a quiet grieving for a wife lost.

  “No, I never seen or heard of nobody like that here

  in Sweet Sorrow,” Tall John had told the three. “I

  mean if I had, I’d sure enough put you fellows on to

  his whereabouts. This is a nice quiet town and we’d

  not want any trouble, especially from notorious

  killers of children and such.”

  He could see their disappointment as they turned

  and walked out.

  “Hey,” Jake said, as he stood on the street.

  They stopped as one.

  “I found your man.”

  They traded looks of suspicion.

  “Yeah, where’s he at?”

  “Not very far from here. Up the street at the old

  saloon called the Pleasure Palace.” Jake nodded in the

  direction of the place. He could see they weren’t buy-

  ing it that easy. It was their nature to be suspicious;

  men who hunted other men for a living generally

  were wary. He anticipated their next question.

  “How come you ain’t just arrested him and col-

  lected that reward money for yourself if you know

  where he is?” Zeb said.

  “I’m not in the bounty-hunting business and he’s

  not wanted around here for anything. You’d be doing

  me a favor removing him from the town. But if you

  boys don’t want him . . .”

  “No, we want him, all right, and we aim to get

  him.”

  “What’s he doing?” Zack asked.

  “What does a man usually do in a saloon?” Jake

  said, and turned and walked away.

  “What you think, Zeb?” Zack asked.

  “I think it all smells like yesterday’s fish.”

  “Well, we going to go get him, or what?”

  “What choice do we have? That’s what we came

  here for.”

  The youngest, Zane, had already started walking