Webb's Weird Wild West Page 5

  God bless

  It was unsigned.

  The second letter was newer—written in an angled hand influenced by book letters. It was addressed to “Whom It May Concern”:

  Dear To Whom,

  I’ve brought up little Billy here as my own child, but the needs of my ten other children are so pressing that I must abandon the little tyke and hope he finds happiness in an honest and honourable profession.

  The sheriff sat on one side of Billy, the doc on the other. They tried rotation, they tried shouting, they tried tough cop and soft cop. All they ever got was “I want to be a gunslinger just like my father was.”

  They handed him pen and paper and he wrote:

  Billy Hauser

  Billy Hauser

  Billy Hauser

  Billy H

  and they took the paper away.

  When night came the sheriff lit a candle. Billy tried to pick the flame up. As Billy sucked his fingers, the sheriff reached a decision.

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to send him to the schoolmarm. The school year’s starting and this boy needs learning.” The sheriff wanted to show Miss Wyatt how well he handled anomalies.

  * * * * * * *

  It was 1897 and Greece and Turkey were at war over Crete, German troops occupied Kiaochow and Americans had been seeing mysterious airships for months. One had crashed in the city of Aurora, in Hidalgo County, Texas on April 17. A small nonhuman body and maps in “an unknown language” were found. A U.S. Signal Corps officer pronounced the pilot “from Mars.” For details, see the Dallas Morning News for April 19, 1897. Watch the skies and hear the wind blow.

  * * * * * * *

  Billy Hauser proved a super pupil. He stood taller than the other kids and handsomer too. Miss Wyatt found herself thinking thoughts unbecoming for a schoolmarm. He’s only a child, she’d tell herself as she watched him knock the dust from the erasers.

  Billy seemed torn between Miss Wyatt and ten-year-old Katherine McCleod. He’d sit at his tiny desk with his knees bent up to his chest and throw pieces of chalk at Kathy, a true sign of love if ever there was one.

  One night Miss Wyatt crept into Rosa’s tent.

  “Miss Rosa, I need a love potion to bind my lover to me and shut out my rival.”

  Rosa handed her a vial filled with an oily green liquid.

  “Pour some of this in his inkwell. He’ll forget about Katherine McCleod. Thirty-five cents, please.”

  “How did you know Kathy was my rival?”

  “Her red pigtails. Men see them and want to dip them into inkwells. In a few years a Viennese physician will explain these things.”

  * * * * * * *

  The sheriff moseyed by the schoolhouse just as the moon was rising. Miss Wyatt marked papers by lantern light. He tapped on the window. She looked up with a start, which melted to disappointment.

  “Say Miss Wyatt what if you and me went to the Founder’s Day Dance?”

  “No thank you, Sheriff. I just might have another gentleman calling.” She turned and a cloud passed over the moon.

  * * * * * * *

  Billy’s story came out in dribs and drabs as he gained a vocabulary. He’d been kept in a dark room which was neither hot nor cold. He was fed by “the man” a thin figure with a domino. The man beat him only once, for being too noisy. His only companions were two mops. When it came time to leave the man took off Billy’s one-piece white garment and dressed him in the fancy duds. The man blindfolded Billy and led him up long long flights of stairs. Billy tripped fell and developed his limp. On the way up the man taught him the I-want-to-be sentence. The man put Billy on the tracks and gave him a shove. When Billy looked around the man was gone.

  * * * * * * *

  “I still say he came in one of those airships like crashed in Aurora.”

  * * * * * * *

  The Methodist Women’s Circle made him some proper clothes months later when his shiny suit fell into disrepair. The sheriff confiscated the firearms. Nothing was said of gun slinging.

  One Saturday Billy and the other kids went to watch the buffalo hunters sell skins to the buyer from Chicago. Billy led the pack with his adult stride. He was several feet ahead when he turned down an alley. When the kids caught up they found Billy lying in the dirt bleeding profusely from the forehead. The doc came. Billy regained consciousness. “The Man” had done it. Billy’d turned into the alley and there was the domino and the glinting dagger.

  The doc bandaged Billy’s head. He told the sheriff that maybe Billy should learn to shoot.

  * * * * * * *

  Miss Wyatt had Billy stay after school almost every day. One day Kathy said, “You stole my man. You and that witch.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, child.”

  “Well you watch out. I’m going to get thirty-five cents in my sock for Christmas and then we’ll see.”

  Miss Wyatt went on with the lesson. Four times four is sixteen, but later in the week she sent a note home to all the parents urging them not to spoil their children during the Christmas holidays. Stocking gifts should be limited to, perhaps, an orange.

  * * * * * * *

  Because of his size Billy was chosen to cut down the school’s Christmas tree. He rode out to Palo Duro Canyon with Mr. Lawton the head of the school board to select a not-too-twisted cedar. They were busily sawing the tree when Billy said he’d have to go to the bushes. He scrambled down the talus slope and Mr. Lawton heard a shot. Mr. Lawton ran to the prone Billy. Nothing moved but the vultures. The vultures always followed Billy.

  “The Man” had struck again.

  Miss Wyatt had to miss the Christmas dance. She stayed in the loft over the livery stable nursing Billy.

  “The woman’s a saint and a true Christian martyr.”

  “Don’t the sheriff look sad without her.”

  * * * * * * *

  In the early spring the sheriff began to teach Billy to shoot. They’d ride out of town find a flat rock to set up bottles and cans. Billy began as blind as a bat and a shaky shooter as well.

  “You’ve got to be more calm. Be at one with your target. Take your time.”

  Bang.

  Miss.

  Bang.

  “No, point the gun at the bottle. Just like pointing your finger at it. There’s no need to hurry. Only the shots that connect count. Fire in your own time.”

  Bang. Shatter.

  “You’re learning.”

  He must really be Eric’s boy.

  * * * * * * *

  A huge wall of gray black dust rose west of town. It poured toward the city. It stung and burned. Everyone took shelter. Except for Billy. Like the candle flame this was totally new. He watched the sun become a tarnished dime. He felt the dirt in his nostrils, between his teeth, pouring into his pants. He saw it flow and splash along burying his shiny boots. The buildings vanished. The sun vanished. It was almost night a superimposition of many tiny dust mote eclipses.

  “The Man” stood before him.

  Billy hadn’t heard him and he couldn’t see him too well, but he knew the smell. If he’d lived a few years later he might’ve identified ether. The ether and dust made his head swim. The Man came at him holding a large needle in his outstretched left hand. But Billy found his time. Just as the needle touched his left forearm, Billy fired.

  They dug Billy out of the dust and listened to his story. “The Man” had vanished with the storm, but lots of blood marked his passing.

  Billy ran a high fever for weeks. The sheriff came to see him every day. At first the sheriff was really interested in seeing Miss Wyatt, but the kid looked so—old. The sand had cut tiny age wrinkles in his face and the fever dimmed his eyes. The kid reminded the sheriff of the sheriff’s father, who’d died of pneumonia. The sheriff remembered his father’s last words, “Son, swear to me you’ll never wear a lawman’s badge.” If Billy Hauser lived, the sheriff would make him into the most notorious gunslinger the West had ever known. The two of them would ride out together.
No one would be safe. And Miss Wyatt could live at the hideout. He’d even picked the cave on the rim of Palo Duro Canyon.

  Kathy brought wildflowers everyday.

  * * * * * * *

  Billy got better. It was time to begin his training in earnest. The sheriff walked to the livery stable. Moaning and thrashing echoed from the loft. Had “The Man” attacked again? The sheriff shinnied up the ladder only to see Billy and Miss Wyatt.

  “Why you son of a bitch.”

  Billy didn’t understand how anything that felt so good could be bad. Miss Wyatt tried to explain to him as he hastily dressed and put on his gun belt. He didn’t understand the crimson blush on her face either.

  The sheriff stood outside the livery. He called Billy out. Billy thought he was going to target practice. Completely calm. The sheriff filled his hand with the notched six-shooter of his gunfighter days. He stood in the corral facing the door of the livery. He would shoot Billy the second Billy stepped into the light. The sheriff’s heart pounded. Rosa heard it and went out to watch.

  Miss Wyatt climbed down the ladder. Stop this thing. She watched Billy approach the sunlit doorway.

  Billy stepped into the light.

  The sheriff fired. Too fast. The bullet sliced off a piece of the lintel. Billy drew up his gun slow like. He found his time. He fired.

  Miss Wyatt learned a lesson in emotional physics. Friendship (like gravity) may be a weak force, but it is ultimately binding. She rushed past Billy to kneel by the sheriff as his red life poured into the shit-strewn earth. Behind Billy in the darkness of the livery, somebody applauded. Who could applaud such a terrible act? Billy wheeled. The Man thrust an ether-soaked rag into Billy’s face.

  * * * * * * *

  A month later: A young man in a silk-shiny sailor suit walks unsteadily along the Galveston dock. He barely makes it up the gangplank of a cotton boat. With unfocusing eyes he turns to the quartermaster and says, “I want to be a sailor like my father was.”

  And in a few days, The Man would once again diamond-etch another notch on his ether bottle.

  SEVEN-FOUR PLANTING

  I knew that the old farmhouse half a mile north of Hedley, Texas was haunted. The realtor even had me sign a disclaimer to the effect that “ghostly visitations would not be sufficient cause to nullify this agreement on the part of the buyer.” Having two brothers who are New York lawyers, I added a writ, “providing that such visitation and manifestations do not cause injury to persons or property.”

  Twenty irrigated acres of red sandy loam—the kind of soil that pioneers would’ve given their eyeteeth for—it could grow anything. I would keep quite a little garden going in my retirement. My first evidence of the ghost came in the form of three yards of manure, delivered from a nearby feedlot. The bill was made out to Angela Thomas. I paid, reckoning to speak to Miz Angela about it the next day. Overnight the manure was worked into the soil, the tomato plants set out, and the bell peppers planted. A lazy man, I decided to forgo talking to Miz Angela. I caught a glimpse of her a few nights later by the thin glow of a new moon. She was planting the southmost five acres. I’d intended to let those lay fallow and hadn’t bought any seed for them. But being how she’d done so much work for me already I couldn’t begrudge her a garden spot of her own. Besides I didn’t want to stir up any trouble; Miz Angela may have been dead these last fifteen years, but in the eyes of the town folk she was a Native and I was an Outsider. After the first spring rain her plants came up. I couldn’t tell much about them save that they were dicots. My beans tomatoes and peppers were doing good, and Miz Angela had sprayed a concoction on my okra that got rid of the rust. Curiosity led me to the nearest newspaper office (in the town of Amarillo about 80 miles northward). I checked out the obit of Angela Thomas. She had developed the Fireworks Assortment Zinnias for Burpee, the Silver Sparkler Dahlia for Park Bros., the Golden Fireburst Chrysanthemum for Lavilers. She had a BS from Texas A&M; MS, University of Cairo; Ph.D., MIT. She’d collected medals from the Imperial Chrysanthemum Society of Nippon, Kews Gardens, and a score of American gardening organizations. No wonder she could cure okra rust. By late June my garden was beginning to be productive and Angela’s plants, which looked more than a little like foxgloves, were ready to burst into bloom. She passed by me one morning and sed, “I call them hannabi supreme.”

  Hannabi, Japanese for flower-fire. Fireworks. On the Fourth of July a few of my friends and Miz Angela and I sat on old lawn chairs and waited for the flowers to burst in sparkling lilac and gold streamers across the sky.

  NIGHT OF A THOUSAND EYES

  Ragan Haggard grimaced with disgust at the stench coming off of the Island of Dr. Death. Then a real grin filled his face. It wasn’t really “the Island of Dr. Death.” The real name of the island was Anderson Gulf Research center #10. He was just remembering Iggy Twerp’s Monster Theater from growing up in Irvine, TX. There was something about the smell that keyed him into that memory. He hadn’t expected that he would be on a supply boat delivering PCs to a experimental station. He didn’t like the job, he suspected that Dr. Baptista was doing something medical, that required an island, something foul that needed isolation.

  Ragan knew that there had been an outbreak of Ebola in Alice, Texas, and he fancied he heard primate calls as he neared the island. The ship’s captain had had little to say, but it was clear that this tiny island in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t his idea of a fun port. Captain Sly had been listening to the radio all day. Ragan was sad at spending his birthday being tech support and away from his daughter, his girlfriend and his friends.

  “I don’t like the sound of the weather. A storm is due on the mainland, and we may have to sped the night. I’m hoping they can put you up, I’m not set up to be an innkeeper.”

  “What do they do on the island?”

  “I don’t know. They eat, I think. There are only four of them—Dr. Baptista, his daughter, a man named Pete—who is some kind of monkey doctor—and Dr. Baptista’s assistant Curtis. But I always bring them lots of food. I am surprised that don’t all weigh 500 pounds.”

  “This Pete, you said he was a monkey doctor,” probed Ragan still thinking of Ebola.

  “I took him to the island a year ago. He talked about socialization patterns of baboons, I think. I am not a science guy, except for the Discovery channel sometimes back in Houston. None of them ever leave, none of them talk to me except for Curtis and Baptista. I don’t like them.” Then Captain Sly added hastily, “But I’m sure you will like them, you are a science guy.”

  “Well, I’m a delivery guy. See I got into customer support when my technical writing job played out, you know how it is—I’ve got a daughter in High School, she just dyed her hair purple.”

  “You know how to tie up a boat?”

  They docked.

  An immense man in a white suit was coming down a path to meet them, Ragan could see what looked like a small palisade fort in the jungle.

  A shot rang out.

  Ragan hit the deck.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked.

  The fat man was almost up to the boat. “It was my assistant killing rats. We’ve got quite a rat problem here. Are you the technical support man?”

  Ragan stood up, embarrassed where his fantasies had taken him, “Well as much technical support as you can get. Can I get a hand unloading the equipment?”

  “My man will be along in a moment. I am Dr. Baptista.” He turned to address the Captain, “You did bring all the supplies I asked for?”

  * * * * * * *

  Later as Ragan finished taking the computer equipment out of its cases in the compound, Dr. Pete Ruchio came in. He was a tall, thin twitchy guy that Ragan hated on sight. He reminded Ragan of an annoying High School counselor that had always been a little bit too intense on running other people’s lives. Just as Dr. Ruchio began to introduce himself, a loud fight broke out in the compound yard, between Baptista and Captain Sly.

  Baptista was yelling that they would have
to leave, that it would interfere with the research if anyone stayed on the island for the night. Dr. Ruchio began loudly talking about the weather and sports and other drivel to try to drown out the ruckus.

  Ragan said, “All of this equipment is pretty standard stuff, what have you been using for the last year.”

  “We had an accident, a fire that destroyed all of our computers about a month ago. We’re having to start from scratch, that’s why Dr. Baptista is so nervous.”

  “That sounds really rough. Is he playing with all his marbles?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well. We’re in a fort. The Gulf of Mexico isn’t exactly the pirate stronghold that is used to be.”

  “You might be wrong there. We were shook down by drug runners a few years ago. They thought that we had drugs or weapons or something. Dr. Baptista, Curtis and I built the palisade. It’s probably just better for our nerves.”

  “What kind of research are you doing here anyway?” asked Ragan.

  At that moment Baptista stormed into the room.

  “Mr. Haggard,” he said, “You will have to be our guest tonight, it seems. I hope you will not find this enforced hospitality too dull. Unfortunately, both Dr. Ruchio and myself are at a crucial stage in our research, so I hope Curtis can amuse you.”

  Ragan started to ask about Dr. Baptista’s daughter, but decided that might send the wrong signal as though he was playing the part of the traveling salesman in the joke. So the island stank and was full of rats, and Ragan suspected nuts as well.

  * * * * * * *

  There were three buildings in the compound. Ragan had seen the partial interior of one, the lab, and as the sun set went to the smallest of the buildings, which served as Curtis’ room. Curtis hobbled in from a busy day of rat killing, closing the gate of the stockade behind him. Curtis was thin, sun-burnt, and had about four days of stubble on his chin. He wore a stained cotton shirt, pants that were more khaki than any other color, and beaten-up boots. He packed two handguns, and as he neared his house, Ragan decided that showering was not among the man’s hobbies.