He lumbers back into the street, and it is midday—the town marinates him in decrepit isolation and base instincts. Some desert fauna nest in the slacks of ramada steps, and their white orbs pop in their adumbration. The vicious curs gnaw at a felled calf donning pustular cysts on its udder and diseased rashes in its brownish coat. Flies and moths populated that stiff air, redolent of cue marks dotting those elusive silent films. The eight establishments that constitute Cherun see the church as their herald—no town hall, sheriff, deputies, militias, bandits—only the rise and stretch of religious fervor was to invigorate sick minds and frail bodies and unmoored souls. The wind and heat float his mental dross from the floor of his skull to abate his interminable vice for violence and ego; he breathes in a new ecstasy, rarer than women for his age. The desperado shuffles to the face of the church, and he hollers.
Albert Steffens! Come’s out now or I’lls come in and bust ye head open.
The wind reminded him of his time in California: the railroad work and the families he met. It paid well, and maybe his old populace had grown permanent there.
Youse have until that bell signs noon and I’lls be dragging you by the feet down to Reno—youse hear?
There some movement in the paneled glass—a man with indistinguishable frame and face, his eyes a frantic buzz at the announcement of his impending death knell. The old man scans and reconnoiters the church, noting any possible escape or grotto that the bounty could skip from. The man inside is to have a quarter hour to surrender himself, and if he refuses his moribund will demand his perdition then and there. The desperado threw his weight into every step, and he rest his hand on the ridges of the store’s feeding trough; the man felt dense in the head, like some hard malaise from the morning grunge. His eyes pulse in the ridges of his sockets, and his kidneys inflame with no water as his heels suffocate in the grip of his boots. The store looks directly to the path of the church—the steeple is tiled with turquoise-painted sheets and the rococo sculpts ornament the tower as a divinity amongst its town of underworld swine and human arbiters.
He lay his shoulder into the breadth of his portico beam and eight minutes passes; the gun he fingers as movement starts from the grand doors. A chain rightly chimes as Steffens emerges from the portal and saunters to face the desperado.
Youse try anything and you’ll be meetin’ your maker fo’ you can even scratches me.
The denizen says nothing.
Youse think youse clever? Getting up in that garb? Hiding up in the only thing these people have left? How’s many men youse killed? Women?
Again, the pastor only peers blankly at this agent. His lips hook into a smile that fleshes into wrinkles across his whole face; the gunslinger brandishes his bowie knife to the faint complexion of this creature before him.
How’s about I gut ‘ye? How’s about that? Huh? You finds that funny?
You ain’t gonna—you need’s that money, fo why else you’d be out here? Yankee.
The old man edges the knife atop his cream collar and with his other hand resting on his holster.
Yankee? I look’s like a Yankee’s to ‘ye? ‘Ye dumb cow.
You ain’t gonna do—
He releases his collar and pumps the butt of the knife above his eye. Gravity tugs him to the padded dust and drab puffs around his weight.
Come on now ‘ye, ‘ye fat scum.
Out behind the saloon there lines a gallery of old nags and scrawny mares—his steed conceals itself in the mass of two feeble beings as some hulking mass. Horse nickers at the sight of his owner and nudges out its snout from the makeshift stable; its black orbs telescope a small reflection of desperado and his bounty. The man scowls at his look and whistles flatly, and the horse trots woodenly at his call. The body, bound in slick hemp, rests on the equestrian rump as the old man checks his saddle straps for tight hasps and still empty pouches. So, the blood and flesh that rose from the desert ground returns to it, and with the stygian product of chain violence does none save man’s heart from the evil of his father and brother. The now Mojave sand runs with brittle bush and silver cholla as vultures stuck in flight trail the desperado’s odor; his stead paces with wooden steps as the bounty’s diaphragm cycles on the equestrian meat. The predawn lights only the pikes before him, trodden with buffalo chips and split axles, and the three souls that ride as one unit ride with peripheral darkness travel to another terminal. In the shapeless lee of towering rocks do wizened cougars grab at angles to look over this newly beast; the scorpions soundlessly skitter in rapid blobs of the antilight; diurnal and nocturnal birthed in the she-devil’s unkind womb as they be viviparous hounds and thieves that do not tire. The rolling cumuli strung with metallic yellow, and its amalgam the light that shines on the life from which it was sourced, only on the tight ellipse of the humanoid bundle. Bodies of onyx flowers confuse for hellish eyes and beavertail cacti for serpentine bowels. The ravening warps of darkness die in the heavenly shine that protects the three souls now.
Only forward does the stead move, for the rolling clouds advance slowly and stave off with fleeting light. The hands of Pandemonium outstretch and reach for frail legs and delicate minds; a nakedness of flesh stripping from the body in frenzy, with the mind first rendered insensate through man’s teachings. The clouds multiply in staunch luminosity and ocotillo changes from supplicant hand to desert fan; the rank grip of sulfur heavies the air and aphotic stays the underworld they tour. Green snakes lap in loops from shine to dark, their bulbous pleats oscillate from sight.
They all stay on their road, cognizant that their failure will have this realm their home. Rose and mauve began to bleed orange and the clouds blast new light as though a retracted curtain call, peeling the darkness from stage. No animals and no spirits—the world has become theirs again and now they search, still, for their next end.
They reach a roadside inn and postal office and the desperado offloads. The station is platformed on two stilts at the front and the roll of the valley on its back. Up at the register a man with rumpled lips and black eyes sits.
Where’s we?
Half’s way off’s of Oakland.
Yous means California?
Yea.
Hm.
Anything’s else?
Huh?
You need a flask or anythings? We got’s some goods for sale.
Nah. Where’s the closest town?
Tracks’ to place off San Diego—maybe a sheriff’s down there.
The desperado eyes him and stamps from the post back to his stead. The bounty looks to have tongued out his gag cloth.
When’s you do that?
When’s I what?
Don’ts get smart on me—when’s you drop that?
The bounded man pauses.
I says—
Just out of Cherun.
Both hush and stare at one another, the bound one in a frozen gyration and the old man with his slouched body.
I’ms gonna unbinds ye—now ye can runs, sho, but I means to shoot ye and cuts yer head off if you do.
He lurches over the denizen and plucks his knife quickly from his wrists and ankles and sheathes it. The pastor sidles off the horse and lands on his hip.
Don’ts break ‘yeself now. I ain’t plannin’ on carryin’ ‘ye.
Yea.
The desperado leads his nag off the post and further into the rolling valley where there lays a dried basin with flat ground. Some dried branches crack under the stomps of the old man and his bounty watches him as he kicks brittle arms into a pyramid.
‘Ye just gone stands there?
Yep.
Damn ‘ye.
Oh, I’m damned, all’s right. No need’s for ‘ye to tells me.
Says that again and I’ll whips ‘ye. ‘Ye hear?
The denizen’s temple pulses with a rush of blood and his lips seal. A fire starts from a match flung into the pit and it hisses from ash into deep hums. He turns over to the horse and caresses its feeble neck to its snout and whispers some old knowledge into its perked ear and it drops mechanically with the dust greying its coat.
Help ‘ye self. Sit.
The bounty flattens the sand before him with the toe of his foot and he sets himself on his wear. Man fastens his bandolier at his breast buckle and sits to face the bounty—the fire their arbiter and boundary.
Yous runs and I shoots ‘ye.
‘Ye says that.
Makin’ sure I did.
Why’s you in this here job, yous a meaner one than most out here.
Them’s good money.
Huh?
I’m meaner than ‘em, that don’t mean big lawman gets meek when I turns yellow.
Oh. I sees.
Do ‘ye?
Ye. I do.
Really?
Hell’s yer problem?
Yer my goddamn problem, you scum.
Alright, mister.
The orange glow makes the bounty as unscathed and pure as his church garbs—his bushy eyebrows fracked with sweat and aquiline nose beading oils and colors. The cheekbones buried deep in his mouth and his eyes plopped like coals on rounded snow.
Yous an ugly one.
Thanks, mister.
‘Sho.
Why ain’t you kill me yet. No risk of me runnin’s off then.
Don’t want your body rottin’ fo’ we reach California.
I ain’t gonna rot in just three days.
I could find’s ye a jar of absinthe and put just ‘yer head there.
Nah, I wouldn’t like that.
What woulds ‘ye like?
Go home.
Where’s home?
Chicago.
Hell’s you hiked down to Texas fo’?
The bounty took a grand pause at the belching whisps. He rustles his hand around his ankle to pull into a crisscross.
Not so ‘sho. Hated my pa, I guess—can’t ‘member why. We was pushin’ a wagon cart and there he tells me I needs to be a man, that I can’t let my pa tell me whats I need. I heards a story from this bastard that my pa was with a lady from the saloon—this lady yous see fo’ a dollar an hour.
Oh.
Ye’—I never knew what that there meant ‘till I tell him off at dinner with my mamie stills in the kitchen. He never looked at me in the eyes ‘till I says that. Y’know what’s he did?
Yeah.
Yeah?
Kicked yer teeth in, that’s what.
The bounty stares and his bonhomie eyes sparkle.
My mouth was swole that whole night—I got there’s my scorched poker and cracked it over his head. I never felts so scared ‘tills I heard his skull pop and knew I just ruined somethin’ I could never there fix. I—
Heads to sleep.
Huh?
Late. We needs sleep.
Well I wasn’t—
Sleep. Or I’ll puts a bullet in ye.
The fire stays as the desperado resting on the floor now makes a pillow of his elbow and boxes his ear in his cupped hand; there he shut his eyes quickly with his shoulders going slack and knee falling on the other—a dark, fully-clothed fetus on desert wastes. The bounty peers, at the man through the fire, and now only into the glowing pit. Horse adjusts its snout and grime dirties the flame and the bounty looks down on the man. A smile creeps onto his face.
Thank ye’, mister.
The agent, pensive in the ground, stays in his sleep. The bounty, also, falls into position, and the man before him his mirror.
The horse woke to the squelch of meat—the desperado pulls his caked knife and wipes it off his trousers. He whistles and the horse raises, and he lugs the limp corpse onto the rear; he runs the tied rope in the underarms and onto the saddle. Chewing on tobacco, he giddies his stead, and they travel to their post.
There he travels, alone. He slept through the day, and the midnight daze bobs his riding head and the arching sky only burning lights, pinpricks into some universal tapestry that made him its witness. He stares at the sky, its constellations of foreign mythos and spiritual science, the broadness and expanse locks of creation with its burrs its stars and its hooks its mountains and lifeblood its men. Spurring horse in its flank, a stop leaves pondering the sky more—the darkness, the animals, and the men all melt in that irrefutable fury and beauty of creation that God had laid out in a show of His power. Man could stand only to witness it, make what he wants and lead himself into his machinations and his repentance and virtue when God had simply made man to be man; that to be a pariah of a world, it is to govern creation through knowing its history. Once a creation no longer rises above the sand; once it no longer proves more aspiring a soul than a pup, then it is anti-creation. Something that falls outside the bounds of interesting knowledge is of no interest—it is gone. Man had disappeared before he killed that bounty half his age. Man dissolved before he took lives of both proprietor and kid. Man was gone before that child audience saw destruction before them.
Life is unchanging, and the old man knows only his job and balance his morality. Darkness to darkness, light to light—a brutish infatuation that reduces body and mind to conquest. A destruction of the internal for the preservation of the external. The man still in his stead and a collective beast sepulchral of absolute invention; he clambers the pike and thinks no more of his place to take life, for his taking it is no more matched than another displacing, producing, renewing it.
The snakes, their birthed creatures that all they know is to steal the eggs and offspring of other so that they can survive, all unto themselves where God his own usher, the man his stage, and the woman the lights, that all life be forced into ceaseless presentation until spirit and body close. That the banana yucca and barrel cactus and silver cholla be garnish of a desert pie and its canvas sand the endless schematic of invection and rush that looks to man and apes it with its own creatures of his paragon self-preservation. Limestone to turn from ancient strata to macadam, and hornfels excavated for hands coveting minerals; man is his own decomposition and nature his own reflection of itself has been masked as some unknown beast, yet it is only the recurrent weight of man’s moral burden that is black sin. The desert—flora, fauna, and land make it. Past man is good and evil; man is sin, virtue, and void. Abyssal constant that allows a taper for either pole—a signal measure that has grown with the trundling of the liturgic wheel.
The dusk lay the land with dark on dark, and the old man and his horse just ride and ride. They reach the town in the backyard of Oakland—a village hidden, and for good reason: ladies with lower lips plump with snuff, emaciated and bloated men from the evils of drug and drink, and brick buildings drip vitriol and refuse. He nears a sad and short house and hitches horse on the nearby fence post. Crabgrass clawed into the ground and the pine oak fence was tattered about with some rolling wire. The hut had slacked roof tiling—the walls a varnished sea green looking milk blue in the moonlight. Horse folded on its legs and peered straight ahead towards the fast fireflies and billow of gnats. A coyote was picking apart the ribs of a fallen mule deer, and the carcasses’ stench attracted more scavengers. Some small kids peek their ruffled heads over the hill’s hang, and their button eyes contrasted with jaundiced skin. The old man keeps his rested face trained on the spawn, yet they did not look at him at all—they eyed that coyote furiously.
He produced a red-tip match and slashed it against his hard chest leather. The match he lopped at the coyote’s snout, and it yelped and retreated as its feast was starting to bat flames. The three children muscled themselves quickly atop the hilltop and leered for the infant fire; one of them peeled their bandana and slammed it up and down on the disemboweled thing. Another kid grabbed a fistful of entrails and stuck it in his pockets, and the third one was positioned at the creature’s head motioning the first child to take its legs. He stands only a couple meters from them, and they turned it supine, and their near-adult strengths let them tug their now dinner from the hillside.
The brush wolf remains just in a distant, overlooking roll. Garnet eyes peeling from lids into a wide glare at the future of this town—it bumbles in the dark and slips away from the hillside. Horse mutters and the old man looks and there is an outline of a black city. He tramps on with his lead horse on a noir dirt pike with tall oil lamps outlining the road. The city was one narrow street that runs up to the town hall—the whole place a gullet of shoddy brickwork and cheap plaster. Some rummies stow under store valances and look like deathly puppets with tattered gowns and alabaster faces. A saloon, bank, woodshop, and parlor were the largest boxes pocketed in rows of adjacent buildings mirrored across the street. Splotches of orange light pop onto the sideroads. One of these establishments is the parlor—indiscernible figures adjusted in seats and chats and raucous. Horse is leashed to a lamppost; the old man scans the face of the establishment. Cornices hang a sign’s bubbly lettering of Dark Rock and shadows dance in the muted glow of windows above. The long panes of glass make the walls of the front, more stains and cracks with the stenciled letters peeling off. He ambles inside and figures lift their head at him from their bar stools and the bartender moves his neck to his movement. The bar stuck to the wall, and there lies a vestibule to a smaller adjoining room—a foyer hangs just to the right of there, and it leads to many doors. The cover of the second floor’s catwalks made for smaller inlets full of busy tables and commiserating souls. Checkerboard floor meeting dark oak walls—the sconces use candlelight and only parts of people and furniture can be seen.
Ye lost?
Sho, where’s the sheriff?
The rest of the shadows crane their necks to peer at the desperado. All begin to glower and chortle.
Gone a while back—he pops in sometimes. Maybe yous saw him.
The old man is alone in the room, only shadows and disembodied voices reach him and irk him in their dark subterfuge.
Yous wisened ups on me?
Well I don’t now follows ye, mister.
The figures on the barstools let out laughs and the doors atop the catwalk shift.
Mister, if you wants—
I ain’t mister wit you. Now’s I asked a simple and easy question: where’s sheriff?
The spirit leans on folded arms over the countertop, and the patrons’ eyes swivel from desperado to bartender.
I don’t knows, friend.
Why’s that?
Why’s what?
Why ain’ts ye know?
Well—
The figure’s head veers from the desperado to his audience, and all let out brave laughter.
Well what?
He ain’t here.
Hell is he?
Damn if I know—asks that no-good carpenter.
Where he at?
Off that street.
The desperado pauses.
If yous still stayin’ in, I gon leave you a drink fo free—our homebrew has real kick to it.
The candlelight makes rimpled hands from the bartender, and his fingernails push from the bed with thick dirt and his hands knuckle-over-knuckle pose inflamed thumbs and raw knuckles. Bar patrons with browned work shirts and holed vests; the foyer barely visible has faint intimate drawings.
How’s ‘bout it?
Gunslinger pinches his muscles and hardens his neck to spit in the bottomless spittoon around him. Just a shake of his head, and he stamps out into the street.
