by Damon Runyon
They hadn’t more’n got on the platform when the regular Cheyenne train pulls in and the top sergeant and a squad of non-coms from my old company hops off. The old man leads the little old lady up to them, and they shook hands all around and stood talking awhile.
Then they went to the baggage car, and the squad hauls out a long wooden box with a flag across it. Somehow it made me sort o’ sick to look at it, because I knew Pretty was inside.
The non-coms put the box on a truck and push it over to the special train and shove the box in the Pullman—not in the baggage car.
The old lady follows it in, and the man stood at the end of the Pullman talking to the top. I couldn’t stand it no longer. I wanted to hear what they said, so I sneaks through the gate and around behind a train on the track next to the Pullman.
The old man was saying:
“I’m mighty glad the boy died like a gentleman, anyway. He was always a little wild, but I never believed he was a coward. I was rather pleased when he joined the army, because I felt it would make a man of him.”
“Yes, sir,” the top says, “he was a man all right. He gave that prisoner a hard fight before he went under, and would have won out if the prisoner hadn’t been stronger.”
I see the drift all right. They was making this old man believe Pretty had been killed in the performance of his duty; see? I listens to a little more, and I makes out that the top has told him Pretty was guarding prisoners, when one of ’em turns on him and shoots him with his own gun. He was giving Pretty a great send-off.
Maybe you think I wasn’t dead sore!
What right had they to tell all them lies? If it’d been me in the box they probably have said I was the worst blackguard in the army and got all that was coming to me.
The top and the other non-coms shake hands all around with the old man again, and then they hikes off. The old man goes into the Pullman, and the engine crew get ready to pull out. I make up my mind in about two seconds, Mex., to go in there and tell them folks all about Pretty and why I had to kill him. I see my chance to get good and even with him more than ever.
I climbed on the rear platform and opens the door. The box was in the aisle, and the old lady was setting in a seat beside it. The old man was with her, holding her hands, and she was crying, soft and easy like. He isn’t crying, but he looks old and tired.
They both raise their heads when I come in and looked at me like they was waiting for me to say something.
“I soldiered with him,” I says, pointing to the box.
The old lady looked at me out of Pretty’s eyes, just as Pretty looked at me that day across the rice paddy. She almost smiled.
“He was all I had,” she said. “He was his mother’s boy.”
The old man didn’t say anything—just looked me over.
I don’t know what got the matter with me. I couldn’t say a thing—just stand there looking at them two like a sad-eye dub. The words I wanted to tell ’em wouldn’t come.
“He was a good soldier?” the old man finally asked.
It wasn’t what I meant to say, but I just had to tell him yes.
“He was all we had,” the old man said. “It is a hard blow, but it is softened by knowing that he served his country well and died in the line of duty.”
I tried to shake myself together and tell them that their boy had been a coward and a deserter, and if he’d lived would have put in a year or so in prison, with a yellow bobtail discharge at the end, but I couldn’t do it—that’s all.
The train commenced to back up, getting ready to start out.
“Do you know any of his companions who have any reminder of my darling boy?” the old lady asked. “They didn’t bring anything—but his body.”
I felt something crackle in my inside breast-pocket. Ain’t I a sucker, though? I stuck my hand in and hauls out that stiffycate of merit.
“Here,” I says, handing it to her. “They sent this to you by me.”
And then I hikes out of that car, for fear I might get dingey and bust out crying myself.
I know some things, all right, all right.
OTHER FICTION
LOU LOUDER
A Tale of Our Town
Lou Louder was a bartender.
He tended bar in the Greenlight saloon.
He was tending bar there the night Shalimar Duke was killed.
Lou Louder was very tall, and very thin, and very pale. He said he was sent to Our Town by a doctor in Buffalo, N.Y., to die. Lou Louder had tb.
Lots of people used to come to Our Town to die. The doctors in other parts of the country highly recommended the climate.
Shalimar Duke was the owner of the Commercial Hotel. He was a short, fat man. He was one of the most popular citizens of Our Town. His books showed that more than twenty-eight thousand dollars was owing him on old accounts when he got killed.
Shalimar Duke married a Mexican girl half his age, named Pabalita Sanchez. Her people had a big sheep ranch. She had beautiful black eyes and black hair and an awful temper. She was like her mother, Juanita Sanchez. She was like her aunt, Maria Gomez, too.
Pabalita was pretty fly, but how could Shalimar Duke know that? He was forty-seven years of age.
The two Baker boys, Joe and Sid, had a fight about her and quit speaking to each other. This made it inconvenient in their business. They were partners in the B. B. coal yard.
Each thought Pabalita loved him. She told them so.
Shalimar Duke went into the Greenlight saloon one night and was talking to Lou Louder when Sid Baker came in. Sid had a .38-caliber revolver in his left hip pocket. Sid was left-handed.
Shalimar Duke asked Sid to have a drink. About that moment, Joe Baker came in. He had a .44-caliber revolver stuck in the waistband of his pants.
Shalimar Duke asked Joe Baker to have a drink. Shalimar Duke didn’t know the Baker boys weren’t speaking to each other. Shalimar Duke didn’t know about the Baker boys and Pabalita.
He was the only man in Our Town who didn’t know.
Joe Baker and Sid Baker were gentlemen. They accepted Shalimar Duke’s invitation to have a drink, even though they didn’t speak to each other.
Joe Baker stepped up on one side of Shalimar Duke, Sid Baker stepped up on the other side. They were all as close together as your first three fingers. Lou Louder was in front of them behind the bar.
It was a hot night. The side door of the Greenlight, directly opposite the bar, was standing open to let in a little breeze. The breeze brought in the perfume of some roses growing at the side door of the Greenlight.
It was a strange place for roses to grow.
Roses were always growing in strange places in Our Town.
There was no one else in the Greenlight saloon at the time.
Shalimar Duke and Joe and Sid Baker all called for straight bourbon. The Greenlight served good bourbon to its regular customers.
Shalimar Duke stepped up on the foot-rail at the bar, so he was up higher than the Baker boys, and Lou Louder, too. He raised his glass, and said, “Here’s now,” and they started to drink when Shalimar Duke fell on the floor dead.
A big-bladed knife with a very heavy handle was sticking in the back of his neck at the base of the brain.
His blood ran out in funny little rivulets on the floor.
He never said a word.
Joe Baker was arrested by Sheriff Letch and taken to the county jail. Sid Baker was arrested by Chief of Police Korn and taken to the city jail. The jails were about a mile apart.
They found a .32-caliber revolver in a side pocket of Shalimar Duke’s coat. Some said maybe he had learned about Pabalita and the Baker boys, and was out looking for them when they beat him to it.
There was much indignation in Our Town.
Lou Louder was questioned by Coroner Curley. Lou Louder said he had turned to the back bar after serving Shalimar Duke and the Baker boys with their bourbon, so how could he see just what happened?
Coroner Curley said, �
�That’s right, Lou.”
A number of citizens went to the county jail and broke down the door and took Joe Baker out and hanged him to a telephone pole. Joe said it was all right with him. Joe said he was the one who stuck the knife in Shalimar Duke. Joe said he wanted to get rid of Shalimar Duke so he could have Pabalita to himself.
Joe said, “Boys, I deserve my fate.”
The telephone company afterwards complained because the hanging broke some of its wires.
Joe Baker really thought Sid killed Shalimar Duke. Joe was trying to save Sid by taking the blame on himself. Joe remembered that Sid was his brother.
He didn’t know that about the time they were hanging him a different crowd of citizens was taking Sid out of the city jail and stringing him up to a girder on the Union Avenue bridge, and that Sid was confessing that he jabbed the knife into Shalimar Duke.
Sid said he did it so Pabalita would be free to love him alone.
Sid Baker really thought Joe killed Shalimar Duke and was trying to save Joe as Joe was trying to save him. Sid remembered that Joe was his brother. He remembered what fun they had together when they were little kids.
It was all very confusing to the citizens of Our Town when the stories were compared after the funerals.
Some said it showed that blood is thicker than water.
There were many arguments about which of the Baker boys really stuck the knife in Shalimar Duke. Sheriff Letch had a fist fight with Chief of Police Korn about it. Sheriff Letch said his prisoner, Joe Baker, was the more truthful of the Baker boys, and must have done it, because he said he did.
Chief of Police Korn stood up for Sid Baker.
Pabalita Duke ran the Commercial Hotel for six years after Shalimar Duke’s death. She died of pneumonia contracted while keeping a date with a traveling man in a snowstorm.
The first thing she did was to try to collect Shalimar Duke’s old accounts.
She never was very popular in Our Town.
Lou Louder lived thirty years longer. Before he passed away he told Doc Wilcox that when he turned to the back bar after serving Shalimar Duke and the Baker boys with their bourbon, he saw, by the back bar mirror, Pabalita step to the side door of the saloon and throw the knife that killed Shalimar Duke.
The knife wasn’t meant for Shalimar Duke. It was meant for Lou Louder. It would have got him, too, if Shalimar Duke hadn’t stepped up on the foot-rail of the bar as Pabalita let fly.
If Shalimar Duke had remained standing on the floor, the knife would have cleared his head and hit Lou Louder kerplunk in the back between the shoulders.
Lou Louder said he had quarreled with Pabalita and had written her a note telling her he was through with her. She got awful mad about it. Shalimar Duke found the note and went into the Greenlight saloon to kill Lou Louder.
He was mentioning his intention to Lou Louder when the Baker boys came in, Lou said.
Shalimar Duke stepped on the foot-rail to get up high enough to have a freer crack at Lou Louder, so Lou thought.
The Baker boys had also gone into the Greenlight saloon to kill Lou Louder, so Lou told Doc Wilcox. They didn’t know each other’s idea because they weren’t speaking. Pabalita had told them, separately, that Lou Louder had insulted her, and made each of them promise to kill him. They both mentioned it to friends that they were going to kill Lou Louder, and the friends warned Lou.
Pabalita had no confidence in the Baker boys.
Lou Louder remarked to Doc Wilcox just before he died that he always felt he had rather a narrow escape that night.
He didn’t die of tb.
He died of old age.
The Chamber of Commerce of Our Town often pointed to Lou Louder during his life as an example of what our climate will do for a man.
ON THE DEAR DEPARTED
My old man used to say he hated to hear of anybody dying but that it made him tired when people took to boosting some departed citizen who was no account when he was living.
My old man said that he did not think that just the act of dying rounded up a fellow who had been petty and mean. He said the idea that you should say only good of the dead was bosh as far as he was concerned unless the dead was somebody you could say good of in life.
Naturally he came in for some criticisms back in our old home town of Pueblo, because no matter how ornery a chap might have been our people were inclined to forget that side of him when the undertaker dropped around to his house. They then usually tried to think up a few boosts for the departed.
My old man could not see that at all. He said he was always willing to join the boosters if they could show him where the deceased prior to shaking off this mortal coil had made any attempt at reparation for a lifetime of mistreatment of his fellow men in public or private, but that nobody ever presented him with such proof but just said he ought not to talk that way about somebody who was dead.
My old man said he did not see why death should make liars of a lot of the living. He used to make it a point to attend the last sad rites over defunct citizens who had had no popularity in the community to say the least, and were known for traits other than philanthropy or good nature, and he said it astonished him the way even the preachers sometimes tried to make white out of black.
My old man said he thought that set a bad example to the community. He said he did not claim that the preachers ought always to tell the plain unvarnished truth about every departed citizen, unless it could be nice truth, but he did think they should be more noncommittal.
My old man said he could see that the unvarnished truth would often get the preachers in trouble with the surviving heirs of the departed, unless of course, the will had already been read and it had come out that the departed had left all his dough to charity and cut them off with the proverbial shilling.
My old man would have liked the story about the no-good fellow they were burying over in Pennsylvania. A preacher who did not know the departed but had a vague idea that his character was not too hot, read a psalm and, then not altogether at ease over dismissing anybody in this perfunctory fashion, said to the handful of persons assembled at the grave:
“And now perhaps some friend of the departed would like to say something.”
There was a long silence and finally a mournful-looking man with a drooping moustache stepped forward, cleared his throat and said:
“Well, if no one else has anything to say, I would like to seize this opportunity to make a few remarks on the iniquities of the New Deal.”
My old man said he thought it was downright hypocritical for people to send big bunches of flowers to the funeral of some fellow they knew very well had underpaid his employees, short-changed his customers, oppressed his tenants, and otherwise been pretty much of a heel in life.
He said it was hypocritical to waste time following to some distant burying ground the mortal remains of a chap you disliked and who disliked you when he was alive, and when somebody once told him that it was just a mark of sympathy with the bereaved family my old man laughed right out loud.
He remembered the time he was in Riley’s saloon taking exceptions to the liberal boosting by a friend of a lately departed citizen of considerable prominence. The friend said it was a great loss to the community and a greater loss to the man’s family.
My old man said that he would give a small cash reward to anybody who could prove to him that the departed had ever done a lick of good for the community. He said he did not know about the man’s family but that from what he knew of the man he would bet he had his wife and children scared of him and that he was as stingy and mean with them as he was with everybody else and that they were probably relieved that he had left them.
A good-looking young chap followed my old man out of the saloon and tapped him on the shoulder and drew him into a doorway and said:
“Friend, I am the departed’s oldest son and I wish you would not go around knocking his memory—but between you and me, friend, everything you said is true.”
; DOC BRACKETT
Doc Brackett didn’t have black whiskers.
Nonetheless, he was a fine man.
He doctored in Our Town for many years. He doctored more people than any other doctor in Our Town but made less money.
That was because Doc Brackett was always doctoring poor people, who had no money to pay.
He would get up in the middle of the coldest night and ride twenty miles to doctor a sick woman, or child, or to patch up some fellow who got hurt.
Everybody in Our Town knew Doc Brackett’s office over Rice’s clothing store. It was up a narrow flight of stairs. His office was always filled with people. A sign at the foot of the stairs said: DR. BRACKETT, OFFICE UPSTAIRS.
Doc Brackett was a bachelor. He was once supposed to marry Miss Elvira Cromwell, the daughter of old Junius Cromwell, the banker, but on the day the wedding was supposed to take place Doc Brackett got a call to go out into the country and doctor a Mexican child.
Miss Elvira got sore at him and called off the wedding. She said that a man who would think more of a Mexican child than of his wedding was no good. Many women in Our Town agreed with Miss Elvira Cromwell, but the parents of the Mexican child were very grateful to Doc Brackett when the child recovered.
For forty years, the lame, and the halt, and the blind of Our Town had climbed up and down the stairs to Doc Brackett’s office.
He never turned away anybody.
Some said Doc Brackett was a loose character, because he liked to drink whisky and play poker in the back rooms of saloons.
But he lived to be seventy years old, and then one day he keeled over on the sofa in his office and died. By this time his black hair had turned white.
