He whisks from bar to brothel to road, horse huffing more in every turn. The moon was his only sight—he found its reflection in glass and eyes. Cards and whiskey cycle his nights. He would stumble slow and vomit quick and relieve himself where he could. Made way into some place off Nacogdoches: the gambling tables were felted a cactus green, the women prettied with sash-dresses. Modestly inebriated, he ambles and stammers on the doors and flings into the floor. Hazes of hats and guns man the tables; a swipe of black lines on white smudge sits at the bar. A speaking hat flutters up.
Out of here, damn drunk.
Huh?
Get out.
Cain’t walk.
Shoot ye’ dead, then ’ye really can’t walk.
Really?
Ought to think so.
That cain’t be true.
Some chuckles chime in.
How’s that?
Three blank cracks drill into this rowdy cap. The person beneath staggers some forwards, one, two steps. Heavies into the right and flat on the boards.
Moved some.
A gray brim and white gallon tower up and flick their wrists belt-wise. Two taps of light toss the guns out the window just behind the gunmen, and a third tap rings into the street.
Aw, shit.
The hats lunge cross and old man fumbles for his game-knife—the case empty. A bony knuckle finds itself in his ribs, a wide swing flies him back into the bar, his elbows anchor his back to ledge. That white smudge bashes the block of a Remington’s butt straight to his temple.
Get ‘im out my bar.
Dragging him from his underarms, the men kick out the backdoor and toss desperado into mud. His nostrils suck up some mud, sobering him right up. A leather toe greets him in the jaw. Shins and knees and elbows beat him hollow. Lacing his fingers round his skull, he turtles. The world is going black. Back in that cave. Was that monster—did it regret? Was his death taxed with shame? These are the questions that course through his mind, getting battered and caved. Memories of that young man he killed in his sleep; that sweeper and bartend he shot down; that deputy; those mercenaries. In just these two weeks, he laid claim to 34 lives. He never counted, but his soul had. He unlaces his fingers, undoes his limbs.
Son of a bitch.
Get your gun.
Gallon hat lumbers off. Grey brim heels pistolero on his liver.
Sick man.
A few more clobbers to his dome.
Nothing without ‘em guns. Nothing.
I’ll kill you.
Huh? Go on?
Kill you.
On your feet then.
He clenches the gunslinger from his shoulder and ups him in the storm-cloud day, clouds and skies dark.
The man paces back, and sizes up gunslinger, readying into a jabbing stance. Pugnacious temptation has him wheel his fists front of old man, taunting a misstep. Pistoleer, slumped and bruised and deviated, leaves his palms hung open at his sides. Hunching into his body, his shoulders could brace this foe.
Here I come.
Mud climbs into their tanned boots, and white gallon runs from side of the bar, stopped in his track. The man weaves in spry energy left-right-left and flourishes an uppercut tugging on too much muscle. With his overstep, a fat foot pitches his arm aside and old man charges. Old man embraces him, hooking round his ribs, constricting with all his might. The fists bounce into his hardening shoulders, weaker and less frequent the more he squeezes. Gallon hat pops off two shots, but the clash persists. Desperate slaps latch at his head, thumbing for his eyes too low to place. Old man tackled from the side, launching all three in the mud. Scattered and astounded, the two men catch their breath, palming the ground for conviction. Something slippery runs in old man’s fingers, and in instinct draws to raze down. The aim drops from chest to thigh, and the figures collapse. Drizzle traces the combatants, and nimbostrati wash their children with tears. World narrowed from bruised vision, old man lays there still on the ground, imagining false faces of wise men and pure spirits.
Hóót’įįd, baa?
Ch’įįdii.
Wrinkled, tanned skin looms in front of beige cloth. His tongue is limp, and his body refuses to listen. Warm hands pinch at his ribs and cool pastes trace into the spaces and his head from his face bandaged in green leaves and his fingers stashed in colored waters.
Another body enters the tent, donning animal wraps.
He is alive.
A hesitant nod appears in the haze.
Old man’s eyes burn in his skull, his remembering for the pain of last night; a bony finger flicks at his head.
Hey.
He spins his globes in his sockets to focus on this shoulder shadow.
Chindi. Wake.
A handsome face looks on him, irresolute in his beading eyes. Again, old man finds himself in the care of strangers. Throat cracked from dry, an itch twiddles his nerves along his arm, splaying fingers for a holster—a faint blot of it in the corner. A watch ticks in his ear, a wisp of vulture licks his nose.
Desperado wakes from a bed now strewn with bones of digits—world of white his respite and the dark before him his end; he realized long before his deathbed that this was his future; this world he rests in was only a distant telling of his destiny so told on pages he has never seen, will never see. Those places off urban jungles and Old World palaces that made him ache to have not known them and to know he had no one to have shown those places and no aspiration for a life bedecked with all this fantasy.
He will die alone, and in death as he was in life will he weld them shut, together. Fear as common as any, fate undone for those who always so fear an unknown death, shifted onto those that had been enslaved to it from times old and they had long forgotten it their master. Muscling from his skeletal embrace, he untenses a jaw clenched from so long—no eschatological finish, no grand release, only a failure to bury his real connection to this world, and that is his credit for death. He gives his death power, and now he grasps what more power it may bring.
To tear this world down was not something of reason, it can not be. Desperado mushes his bare feet in dissolving blades, iron welling through his spaced toes.
I was giving others’ life power, but not my own; I thought so much of theirs and loosened my mental strength to think that I was worth no more than a natural passing. To be born without reason is one idea, but to live without reason is what had eaten into my soul so long ago– a parasite I never find until it’s burrowed itself in the tendons and fat and left me with nothing but eyes to witness my ignorance.
The grated plain stretches out far and the sun black with night and twilight runs over the teethed iron; smell of burning plant douses his mind and his vision narrows with thickening void. Arms tighten with losing breathe, his chest pulls him from his mind and into the world again.
A stick dripping violet on his lips dangles overhead. The tent broken in with starlight and firelight, a young face looks over him and the back of his head unstrains and his grips on his palms lessen.
