The Six-Gun Tarot

by R. S. Belcher

  The corpse was still.

  Outside, the coyotes were howling off past the old graveyard, out in the deep desert. The arc lamp dimmed and popped loudly. A shower of blue-white sparks fell down over the corpse as the artificial lights failed completely.

  The squirming in Jim’s pocket became more insistent. He reached his hand in slowly, afraid and certain of what he would discover. The eye was cold, cold like water running off the mountains back home in March. Cold like his mother’s eyes when she buried Pa in her mind and heart. The cold stung Jim’s fingers as he pulled the eye from his pocket. It was glowing; a pale green fire wreathed it and slowly spread to his fingertips. The fire was cold. The alien pupil regarded him, unblinking, like the dead man’s eyes. The tiny characters orbiting the iris shifted, just like before. Just like the graveyard outside of Albright. It was all happening again just like last time.

  He turned the blazing eye to face Stapleton’s corpse. Jim’s legs were made of water; his mind was a flat, featureless wall of fear. The emerald fire was carried on the faint starlight that invaded the workshop. It drifted toward the dead man, like sparks on a dry prairie wind.

  Jim knew what was going to happen next, just like the last time.

  Just past the edge of Albright, the old cemetery squatted—an ugly scab of brown and yellow grass, black, twisted skeletal trees and crude-hewn, lopsided gravestones that jutted at angles like a mouthful of snagged teeth. There hadn’t been a Christian burial in the old place for over thirty years.

  Rick Puckett drove the buckboard while Jim covered him with the rifle. The night had come up on them while they rode out of town and now only moonlight guided them down the old weed-choked rutted road. It was early April and the chill was still heavy enough for Rick to complain about it until Jim told him to shut up. Jim wished he had grabbed his jacket too, but his anger was keeping him warm and he hated to listen to the man who had bet his father’s eye whine.

  On the way out of Albright, in the evaporating light, Jim had told Puckett to lay out exactly what happened to Pa on the night he went missing. At first Puckett tried to hem and haw about it, but Jim would have none of it.

  “You saw what I did back there at the saloon,” Jim said slowly, calmly as he could, but the reality of his act made his voice crack a little. “I shot a stranger, a man who never did me no harm. You think I’ll give two ticks about dropping the S.O.B. who killed my pa?”

  “But I swear I didn’t, Jimmy—”

  “Now you tell me what I want to know, everything I want to know, right now, and if what you say is true and I believe it, if you didn’t kill my pa, then you can go home tonight, square deal?”

  Puckett sighed and focused on the road and the swishing tails of the horses.

  “Square. First of all, like I said, I didn’t kill him; I jist helped bury him.”

  It went like this. Rick and Jacob Gnau and Eldon Coyle and a few others were sitting at a table in the Cheat River Saloon with Charlie Upton, drinking bourbon and beer, when Billy Negrey came in. Billy was looking a little bit drunk and a whole lot mean. He sat down at one of the faro tables and commenced to playing and drinking.

  Billy’s luck wasn’t too good and pretty soon he was out of cash. Charlie downed his drink and with a grin and a wink walked over to Billy. He whispered something in Billy ear and tried to hand him a stack of cash. Billy knocked the bills out of Upton’s hand and socked him square in the jaw.

  “Charlie stumbled back,” Rick said, “up ’ginst the bar. He spit some blood. Charlie was madder than blazes. He was heeled and he drew on your pa. Billy didn’t have a gun, but he came at him anyway. Took his gun away from him and slapped him again before Charlie could even get a shot off.

  “The whole derned place got quiet and me an’ the boys got up to help Charlie out. Your pa aimed the gun at us and said he’d shoot us, if we gave him a reason. Then he told Charlie he wasn’t nothin’, that for all that money and that fancy house, an’ all, he would never be as rich as old One-Eye Billy. He said Charlie had never done a decent thing in his life or a brave thing. Brought up how Charlie had stole half his money off the bodies of dead soldiers, said Charlie’s pa should have whupped him more when he was a boy, so he’d be a man now. And Charlie had to stand there with his own gun pointing at him and listen to all this. Then Billy said he felt sorry for him. Now if that don’t beat all for crazy. Like I said, your pa was pretty drunk. He emptied Charlie’s gun on the floor and then threw it to him on his way out the door.”

  “Why didn’t anybody tell the sheriff or anyone this? They all said Pa left round eleven with no trouble.”

  “Hell, Charlie bought everybody drinks for a spell. Told everyone he tried to pay up Billy’s debt an’ send him home to his family and that was the thanks he got. Charlie’s a good man, Jimmy. He does a lot for the folks round these parts, he—”

  “Shut up,” Jim muttered. His knuckles were white from gripping the rifle’s stock. “Tell me the rest of it; tell me how you ended up burying my pa.”

  Rick swallowed hard and looked at the Winchester’s barrel, then back to the road.

  “Well, we kept a’drinking. A little while after Billy left, Charlie walked outside for a spell with Jacob and Eldon. He came back alone. He kept on buying rounds and even gave a toast to old crazy Bil … I mean your pa. Well, ’bout closing time, Eldon comes back in and whispers something to Charlie. He tells me to git up, we’re going somewhere. Charlie dropped the money he was trying to give your pa on the bar and tells the bartender he’s paying for the house. Like I said, hell of a nice g—Um, so we all ride out past the city limits, following Eldon, and he takes us up to the old veterans cemetery. And there is Billy all busted up and cut and bloody and he’s tied to a tree and Jacob is there with him and he’s got a buck knife and his hands are all bloody. Eldon’s too, now that I can see by the lantern light. Jacob hands Charlie the knife and um…”

  “What?” Jim said.

  “He cut your pa,” Rick said quietly. There was fear in the memory. “Real bad. Worse than skinnin’ a deer. Talked to him the whole time he did it too. Said all kinds of hateful things to him … bad things about your ma, you, your little runtling of a sister. He said…”

  The Winchester was against his cheek. It trembled.

  “Hell, boy! You asked! I’m jist…”

  “Who ended it? Who put the bullet in him?”

  “You know,” Rick mumbled. “Right ’tween the eyes. Your pa, he never begged. He never said any of the things Charlie wanted him to say. He made Charlie madder than the devil, Jimmy. He died real good.”

  “Take me there,” Jim said. “Where you buried him. Now. And don’t talk no more, damn you.”

  When they arrived at the old cemetery, Rick told Jim that Pa was buried in a stand of sycamore trees at the edge of the burial ground.

  “You have your shovel?” Jim asked flatly. Rick nodded. “Bring it.”

  It wasn’t much of a resting place. A sparse fringe of grass and weeds had sprouted up in the upturned dirt in the time since Jim had gone away. He watched Puckett dig. Jim’s mind, his heart, were empty, still. He listened to the metallic crunch of each shovelful of dirt, to Rick’s labored breathing and his occasional sobs. The anger was still there, but it was cold now, like iron rails frozen over, and it no longer protected him from the cold or his own weariness.

  They had no lantern, but the moon was bright and its light fell, pale and stark between the barren branches of the sycamores.

  The rhythm of shoveling stopped.

  “Jimmy,” Rick said.

  They hadn’t wrapped Pa. They hadn’t even given him an old horse blanket to rest under. Jim felt the cold and then numbness all fall away. He felt so old, so scared.

  Something moved in his pocket. It could have been a snake for all he cared. He almost fell down, but he didn’t. He felt a dull endurance hold him up. There were things to do, to be attended to. Man’s work, and he was the man now.

  He aimed the rifle at
Rick.

  Puckett raised his hands, his faced screwed in terror. “Please, Jimmy, I swear, I didn’t.”

  “Git now,” Jim said in an even voice he didn’t recognize. “You git, and you tell him that I know what he did and that Billy Negrey’s son is coming for him. Tell him he can hire a mess of shit-heels like you, tell him he can pack every gun and every knife he’s got, but I am coming to kill that sumbitch. Tell him that.”

  Rick started toward the buckboard. The bullet whined like an angry hornet past his ear and the Winchester boomed.

  “Leave the wagon,” Jim said. “Run.”

  He sat at the foot of his pa’s grave. Rick’s panting had faded and there was silence.

  “I’m sorry, Pa,” he finally said. He didn’t know what else to say. What a mess. Whatever was squirming in his pocket moved again and it finally registered in his awareness. He reached in and gasped at the coldness.

  The eye. He slid it out of his pocket. It was engulfed in green fire, but it didn’t burn like fire—felt more like a frostbite. He held it up, turned it in his fingers as the green light spilled out of it like a lantern. He looked at the back of it, trying to find a catch or something.

  “Hello, Jim.”

  Across the open grave, Billy Negrey crouched at the other end of the hole. Jim couldn’t make him out too well, he was bathed in shadows, but it was his voice and when the moon slipped between the branches it caught the green light of the eye and gave Jim a glimpse of Pa’s face. He was smiling and young and he had two eyes. Wherever the light hit him, though, he seemed to fade, like he was made of fog or glass. You could see stuff behind him, through him. He didn’t seem to mind.

  “You a haint, Pa?”

  “I rightly can’t say. There’s a lot of stuff I’m not allowed to say to you now. I’m sorry about that, Son.”

  “That’s all right, Pa.” The tears were hot and they made it hard to see. “We all sure do miss you. Is this some kind of Johnnyman wisdom—can it bring you back? ’Cause Ma, Ma sure does miss you, and Lottie, she’s…”

  He wept, sobbing like the boy he still was. The shade was patient. It stood silently, with an expression wise and sad.

  “I can’t come back, Jim,” it finally said. “I’m sorry, Son. You’ve got to carry on; you look after your ma and your sister. I know you can. You know I was proud of you, Jim. Very proud.”

  “It was Charlie Upton that shot you, right?”

  “I can’t say, Son. The rules. From behind that gun, the fella sure looked like Charlie Upton looks, though.”

  The shade grinned. A cold wind spun through the graveyard, carrying dead leaves in its wake. It shook the branches of the sycamore trees and the shade faded and reappeared in patches of shadow and emerald light.

  “All right, all right!” the shade shouted to the wind. “I’ll behave. Let me talk to my boy.”

  It turned back to Jim. “Listen, Son, I can tell you that you have to keep that eye safe, have to. It’s your birthright, Jim. I wish I could give you more, but it’s yours. You’ve earned it in blood and gumption.”

  “But Pa, I killed a man, and I’m going to get Charlie for what he done to you. I got to stand for all that, don’t I?”

  “I can’t tell you what to do or where to go, Jim. But I can tell you we all stand, Son. In our own time in our way, we all stand.”

  The wind had not died; it had strengthened in fact. Dry, brown leaves were swirling about the grave. The clouds were on the move. Massive dark ones swallowed the edges of the bright moon. The eye was a frozen green star in Jim’s hand.

  “I’ll take good care of it, Pa. I swear. And I’ll take care of Ma and Lottie too.”

  “I know, Son, I know. I always knew you wo—”

  The moon was gone. The eye was dark. The wind eased, settling a cover of leaves over Billy Negrey’s remains. Jim was alone.

  Clay walked back into the workshop, his white hair mussed from scratching his head. He had a book under one bony broomstick of an arm and the hypodermic in his other hand.

  “Lights went? Dammit! I’ll be dipped in tarnation if I can’t figure this one out, Jim. It’s got properties of blood, but it sure don’t seem to be human blood or any animal I can classify. I’m afraid I’ve jist got another cipher for the sheriff to worry over, instead of helping figure out who did old Stapleton in.”

  “I know who did it,” Jim said softly as he slipped something back into his pocket. “Big fella. Black hair, clean-shaven. Strong, real strong. Dresses in black like a minister or such. I don’t got his name but that’s what he looked like when he forced that stuff down Mr. Stapleton’s throat.”

  The Queen of Pentacles

  Sarah was in the barnyard, scattering feed for the chickens, when she saw her husband ride toward the farmhouse on his golden palomino. She tossed the remainder of the mash in her basket onto the ground with a casual shake of her hand. The chickens squawked and momentarily scattered, but hunger overcame fear and they swarmed to gobble up the discarded meal. She closed the gate to the yard and made her way to meet him at the fence that ran along the perimeter of the pasture. Clumps of green Indian ricegrass dotted the field, lush defiance to the desert’s sterile rock and dust. Most of the herd lazily munched on the grass, oblivious to Sarah’s passing. Her favorite heifer, old Ellie, raised her head, long enough to give Sarah a moan of greeting before returning to her meal.

  Sarah didn’t primp; she didn’t adjust her bonnet to capture the stray gray hairs that had fallen loose, or to straighten her hem or smooth her skirts. She spit some of the desert’s dust out of her mouth and wiped the sweat of the morning’s chores off her brow. Her husband pulled his mount to a stop by the fence post she was propped against.

  “Good morning, Harry,” she said to Golgotha’s mayor and her husband of eight, almost nine, years. “Coffee’s waiting up at the house, if you have the time. I know it’s a sin, but it’s a good one.”

  She was amazed, as always, by the sheer beauty of him in the sun. His red hair caught the sunlight peeking over Methuselah Hill. His eyes were burning sapphires, and when he looked at you, really looked at you, you were the only thing in creation. She put such schoolgirl nonsense away. She loved Harry, more than any other man she had ever known, but she knew it would never be that way, could never be that way.

  “Sarah,” he said. He wasn’t smiling and now, after the initial surprise of seeing him had passed, she realized he was tired. There were dark circles under the blue eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Holly’s missing,” he said as he dismounted. “She left yesterday evening and never made it home. I’ve got Jon Highfather out looking for her. She took the carriage but no clothes, not much money.”

  “Maybe she figured what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

  “Sarah!”

  “Well, Harry, it’s true. How long did you expect her to sit up there in that house and wait for you to be a real husband to her?”

  They walked along opposite sides of the fence, headed toward the main house. Harry led his horse by the reins.

  “Dammit, Sarah, that isn’t fair. You know how much I’ve tried with her.”

  “Tried to what, Harry? Pretend to be something you just aren’t? To put up with her wanting children with you? You lied to her, Harry. You lied to yourself and you lied to her.”

  They walked in silence. The sky got brighter as the last of the night’s chill burned off. The cows groaned blandly. A vulture glided silently out into the desert, following death.

  They reached the house. Calvin Evans, one of the farmhands Harry had hired to help Sarah keep the place up, tipped his hat to the mayor. Harry returned the greeting with a nod. Calvin was hitching up a pair of gray draft horses to an Owensboro wagon, in preparation for a trip into Golgotha, probably to Auggie’s store.

  Harry hitched his horse to the post next to the water trough, and joined Sarah on the porch.

  “Sure you don’t want the coffee?” she
asked, settling into a rocker with a groan.

  Harry knelt next to his first wife. “Sarah, please, I’m worried about her. Have you seen her?”

  “Not for a while, Harry,” she said. “She came by a few weeks ago. We talked for a spell. She had been drinking; I could smell it on her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s none of your business, Harry. Any more than where you go and who you spend time with is ours. You set the rules for this; we just followed them.”

  “You’ve never seemed to mind them before,” he said.

  She smiled. “Of course I didn’t, Harry, my sweet. I am very grateful to you for all you’ve done for me and the children. When Gabriel passed, I was out in this wilderness alone with little James and Rebecca. I thought I wouldn’t make it. I prayed to the Lord for deliverance, and He sent me you, my golden boy.”

  Harry remembered his father’s face, and the faces of the temple elders, when he told them that he had finally decided on a wife and that she was twice his age and had two young children by her recently deceased husband—an old friend of Harry’s family. The memory made him smile. They had pushed him, tried to control him, and he had pushed back. He had never regretted marrying Sarah.

  “You have always been the one person in this pissant town that I could ever really talk to, Sarah,” he said. “The only one who ever accepted me for what I am, and what I’m not.”

  “You’re selling Holly short,” she said, shaking her head. “That girl loves you. She’s loved you her entire life, since you two were children. I remember when you and Holly used to sneak away at any social function you could. I remember how you held her when you two danced. You love her too, Harry. Talk to her. She deserves the truth and, who knows, maybe you‘ll have two people in Golgotha you can trust.”

  Harry rubbed his whiskers. Calvin was up in the wagon. He called out to them that he’d be back in an hour. The wagon clattered through the open gate and down the road toward Main Street.

  “She knows,” Harry finally said. “She’s known for a while. I didn’t tell her in a very sweet way. She had been drinking and I had been out all night again and she pushed me. I just kind of blurted it out. I’ve … I’ve been blaming her for it ever since, saying she wasn’t woman enough.”