Queer Westerns Issue

QUEER QUEER WESTERNS WESTERNS

EDITORS NOTE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WELCOME TO THE RANCH - RACHEL TURNEY

PEOPLE ARE STRANGE - THOMAS MALINOVSKY

BOBBY TWO WINDS - MAX SHERIDAN

CHAPS AND BULLETS, HIGH NOON, I WILL NEVER BE A COWBOY,

I’M ALL PISTOLS, NO HOLSTERS, WHILE IN THE WILD WEST - BEE LB

HIGH NOON GRIN - SIDNEY HO

A COWBOY LIKE ME - KAYLEIGH DUGGER

EXCERPT FROM UTOPIA - MIKE PLAYER

DEATH OF THE OLD WEST, USE ME LIKE A BITCH - NICK ARMBRISTER

REVIEW OF “NATIONAL ANTHEM” - DEVON WEBB

WILLY‘S HANDS - MARTHA HIPLEY

THE MEANINGS OF CHESHIRE - R. P. SINGLETARY

PARTNERS IN CRIME - BETHANY CUTKOMP

MY TWIN SISTER FRANCHISES ME - FEZ AVERY

COLD BEER INSIDE, DISTANCE, HIGH WATER, OHIOAN AIR, QUICK SHOT - BEE LB

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED

THOMAS MALINOVSKY’S “THE END” HAS BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN ANARCHIST FICTIONS JOURNAL.

NICK ARMBRISTER’S “DEATH OF THE OLD WEST” & “USE ME LIKE A BITCH” HAS BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN HIS OWN BOOKS TO READ ON HIS WEBSITE.

YOU CAN READ ALL OF MIKE PLAYER’S UTOPIA HERE

CONTRIBUTER BIOS

Rachel Turney (she/her) is an educator and teacher trainer. Her poems and prose are published (or are in press) in The Font Journal, Nap Lit, Ranger, Through Lines Magazine, Bare Back, Cafe Lit, and Teach Write Journal. Her photography appears in Writers Resist, The Salt, San Antonio Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine, and Ink in Thirds Magazine. Blog: turneytalks.wordpress.com Instagram: @turneytalks

Thomas Malinovsky (he/him) is a Russian-American writer currently residing in Northern Virginia. His work is scheduled to be published in Anarchist Fictions Journal and has been in George Mason University's Volition and The Forge. He is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Government and English at GMU, where he works as a consultant at the Writing Center

Max Sheridan (he/him) is the weirdo who wrote the novels Dillo and God’s Speedboat. He lives in Nicosia, Cyprus.

BEE LB (they/them) is a cowboy sans hat n boots who dreams of rodeos sans animal violence. they've been published in Dirt Child, G*Mob, MOODY, and Landfill, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co and they can be found at patreon.com/twinbrights

Sidney Ho is an artist from Toronto.

Kayleigh Dugger (any pronouns) is a crow trapped inside a human body in WNC. She takes pop-tabs off the can, and inspiration from anything he’s heard ever. You can also read her squawkings in the University of Mary Washington’s Aubade (Fall 2022, Spring 2023), Western Carolina University’s Nomad (2023), and Shenandoah University’s Avalon (2024). To hear more noise, follow them on ig: @whale.calls .

Mike Player (he/him) is a writer and comedian. He is the editor and a contributor to the nonfiction book “Out On The Edge” (Alyson Books, 2008) and the author of the indie novels “Viral” and “Hyperloop To Hell.” Two of his science fiction short stories were published in the Summer 2024 edition of Altered Reality Magazine. Find out all about him at www.mikeplayer.net. @authormikeplayer IG Link tree to all his work: https://bit.ly/3SKy6tM

Born in Oldham, a Lancashire mill town in 1971, Nick Armbrister (he/him) has lived in various places and now in SE Asia. Has many interests include writing, studying history, military aviation, current affairs. He loves Gothic music and metal, likes the 1980s for what is was (trash decade!), loves tattoos and wants more. His writing is both varied and broad covering many subjects in poetry and stories. His work has been published in zines, online, in anthologies, and he has worked with several international writers/poets/authors.

Devon Webb (she/her) is a writer & editor based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her award-winning work has been published extensively worldwide & revolves around themes of femininity, vulnerability, anti-capitalism & neurodivergence. She is a staff writer for Erato Magazine & Pulp Lit Mag, an editor for Prismatica Press, & a founding member of The Circus (@circuslit), a collective prioritising radical inclusivity within the indie lit scene. She can be found on social media at @devonwebbnz.

Martha Hipley (she/her) is a writer, artist, and filmmaker from Baltimore, Maryland, who lives and works in Mexico City. When not writing, she enjoys training as a triathlete and boxer and exploring flea markets

A rural native of the southeastern United States, R. P. Singletary (he/him) writes fiction, poetry, drama, and hybrid. More about me at: https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/r p singletary & https://newplayexchange.org/users/78683/r-p-singletary.

Bethany Cutkomp (she/her) is a writer from St. Louis, Missouri. She enjoys catching chaotic vibes and bees with her bare hands. Her work appears in HAD, trampset, Ghost Parachute, Exposed Bone, The Hooghly Review, and more. Find her through her website at https://bdcutkomp.wixsite.com/portfolio or on social media at @bdcutkomp.

Fez Avery (they/them) is an MFA candidate in poetry at Virginia Tech. During summers, they teach poetry, spoken word, and creative nonfiction at Interlochen Arts Camp. Their work can be found in The Journal, Gulf Coast, and NonBinary Review. They are currently working on a poetry collection with co-author Karyna McGlynn.

WELCOME TO THE RANCH

When I saw her I knew.

I knew her long dark hair would fall in tendrils around her head and I would pick little bits of hay from it. I knew I would comb my hands over her breasts and down her body. She would smell like sweat, leather, and the peppermint gum she was chewing that first day. She would arch her back, just like the curve of a saddle as she moaned. A rough, throaty sound. I knew all of this the moment I saw the new ranch hand.

“Hi, I’m Zoe.”

“I’m Rebecca.”

“Welcome to the ranch…”

PEOPLE ARE STRANGE

It’s a pretty big settlement, all things considered. Fence and barbed wire, sandbags along the river. (According to Dad’s old maps, it’s the Mississippi. Not that that matters now. Still, Dad made her memorize the topography of the old US before he taught her how to read, and old habits die hard.) Water source is important, running water even more so. Charlie’s been watching them long enough to know that they all throw out their excrement downstream. Makes sense, since they’ve survived this long without a cholera outbreak.

Fat lot of good it did them.

There’s a section of wire fence that’s simply been pushed over. People will try to put it up again, but right now, it’s just flat. In the early morning light, the smoke of several fires blends in with the mist off the river. Charlie can see a couple people digging a mass grave. That’s what it always comes down to. Mass graves.

She finishes her cigarette and stubs it out on her hand before tossing aside the butt. Hand-rolled, of course. Everything worth having is handmade these days.

With a swift movement, she puts up the kickstand of her bike and rolls off towards the still flattened section of the fence.

The man they call for as soon as she materializes through the wall, children and women scattering as several guys grab for their rifles, finally shows up five minutes later. Charlie still has roughly five guns pointed at her and she’s almost finished rolling a new cigarette.

The guy walks up to her. He looks like all his muscles are tensed up. Bags under his eyes. Mousy brown hair. Brown eyes. Pale.

Looks like he doesn’t sleep much. Makes sense, if he’s got any hand in running this place. He juts his jaw out and stares at her.

Charlie tucks the finished cigarette back into her pocket. She knows what she must look like to these people: red-brown hair in braids that stream out behind her when she’s on her bike, black bandanna pulled up to cover her face, rifle strapped to the back half of her seat.

She makes a big show of putting up her hands. One’s completely metal and the other’s halfway there. “I come in peace,” she says, drawling out her vowels like Dad always did. “Seems like y’all ran into some trouble las’ night.”

A girl close to the leader starts signing rapidly, angling herself to be visible by the guy. Charlie waves at her to stop and she turns, wide-eyed. “I got it,” Charlie says, her prosthetics catching the light as she signs what she just said.

If anything, the guy’s expression turns even more suspicious. Why? he asks, drawing his hand away from his head sharply.

“Well,” she speaks aloud as she signs, for the benefit of her growing audience. “I happen to be almost out of gas and bullets. If y’all’d be willin’ to supply some, I’d stick around and help take care of your problem.”

What makes you think they’ll come back? the man asks, frowning. They got what they wanted.

She gives him a look. “‘Cause they left some of y’all alive,” she says, blunt. “‘S like farmin’. Why kill the whole herd when you can get a couple and then come back later? Y’all are buryin’ a bunch of your people out there, I saw, but not as many as you should be, huh? I bet the raiders took a couple. Raidin’s hungry work.”

People are starting to mutter. The few children in the crowd get pulled up into arms or sent to scurry back indoors. They’re not stupid if they’ve lasted this long. They noticed the raiders taking people away. Kids, probably. Easy to carry, good for later. They just didn’t want to believe it.

Charlie fights the urge to roll her eyes. People these days are privileged enough to think that cannibalism’s impossible. What horseshit. Nothing’s impossible. People will do anything if they’re desperate enough.

And you’d know, of course? the man asks, derisive. What raiders do. She snorts. “I sure would.”

So why should we trust you?

“‘Cause while you’re payin’ me, I’ve got no reason to double-cross you. If I wanted to, I would’ve caught up to the raidin’ party and asked to join them. I’m just here ‘cause I guess I’m such a bleedin’ heart.”

And because the raiders came on horseback. They won’t have any gas for you.

Charlie shrugs, still grinning under her mask. Two things can be true.

“What are you gonna do?” one of the men by the leader shouts. The translator-girl’s hands fly into motion. “There’s only one of you. There were almost thirty men. You look like a strong breeze will knock you right over.”

The grin turns sharper. “You jus’ lemme stick around ‘til they turn up again. Don’ pay me shit ‘til you can see what I can do. Fair’s fair.”

The leader shoots the man who spoke up a glare, either pissed at being interrupted or that the guy didn’t bother to sign. And I suppose you want us to feed you while you wait for the raiders who may or may not come back?

“Nah,” Charlie drawls. “I don’ eat much. Jus’ gimme a place to park. Seems like some empty space jus’ opened up here, anyway.”

The leader looks absolutely grim. The rifles on her have lowered their scopes to the floor by now. He looks around, at the little kids cradled by their parents, runs a hand over his hair, sighs, and nods, gesturing for her to follow.

Charlie swings her legs off her bike, walking it after him.

She can already feel the adrenaline building. This is gonna be fun. She hasn’t gotten to hunt in forever.

It’s a couple weeks before the raiders come back and surprisingly, the settlement seems to warm up to Charlie in that time. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising: after all, she keeps her bandanna up when she’s around anyone at all. Still, based on Jacob’s stories of the old world, people were never particularly charitable towards outsiders and the world ending definitely didn’t make them more so.

So Charlie’s sure she’s going to be politely evicted when Translator-Girl comes up to her on the first day. Charlie’s settled by the fence, her bike propped up and providing some shade for her bedroll. She watches the kid approaching– not a kid, not really. She looks about seventeen, only a couple years younger than Charlie herself, but there’s something about her manner. There’s a hesitation there that says she’s never been hurt before.

Charlie’s never been allowed to have that.

“My name’s Hope,” the kid says.

Charlie stares at her, blankly.

She shuffles her feet, looking down. “I, uh, brought you some food.” She holds out the plate she’s holding. There’s some mashed potatoes and barbecue.

Charlie does like barbecue. Still, she makes herself say, “If I take that after I said I wouldn’ take y’all’s shit, your boss is gonna be all up my ass.”

“My– oh, Noah? He’ll be fine. We had some leftovers anyway. And I’m giving it to you, so.” She keeps holding it out, at arm’s length like Charlie’s a stray dog.

Against her better judgment, Charlie gets up and takes it. “I’ll bring the plate back,” she says.

The kid seems to deflate a little. What, was she hoping Charlie would let her stay and chat? “Alright,” she says, forcing a smile. “Uh. Thanks for helping us out.”

And with that, she’s gone. Charlie shakes her head, sitting with her face to the fence before pulling her bandanna off. Fucking kids.

She thinks the little incident with Hope is going to be the end of it, but the girl keeps coming back, bringing Charlie three meals a day. Ridiculous. Ridiculous and indulgent, but Charlie won’t bite the hand that feeds her. (She has before, but she won’t this time.)

It’s an even greater surprise that other people follow suit. A somber-looking fouryear-old comes up to her and asks why she doesn’t have hands. Charlie replies that a raccoon ate them. The kid nods and takes her prosthetic in his tiny fingers, looking it up and down. Charlie puts her hand on his face and pushes him off, gently. He giggles.

After that, there’s a crowd of children following her around as she helps the men rebuild the fence and scopes out lines of sight on the road that the raiders took last time. She gets used to little hands pulling on her shirt and little feet getting in her way and little heads bobbing around her at waist-level.

A week and a half into her stay, she sees a kid put their arms in the air next to her out of her peripheral vision and it’s pure reflex to pick the kid up under their armpits and put them on her hip. As soon as she’s done it, she puts them down again, but it’s too late: the dam has broken. Now everyone wants “uppies” all of a sudden. Fucking ridiculous.

She’s got to get out of this damn town. They’re acting like she might belong here and she knows better than that. She’s always known better than that.

Still, she lets Hope sit by her and when Hope asks her what her headphones are, she pulls her Walkman out. The girl’s eyes light up and she actually gasps when Charlie pulls out her three tapes: The Doors, Eagles, and Queen. Charlie pulls the headphones out of the player and lets part of The Doors album play out loud. Hope closes her eyes and listens like she’s praying.

Charlie looks away. It reminds her too much of how she’d looked, listening to her tapes for the first time with Dad.

There’s still a good degree of hostility from the adults and that reassures her, in a way.

Noah doesn’t bother disguising the way he watches her and the others are even worse. There’s the glares and the spitting at her feet, the brusque questions about where she’s come from and what she wants from them. It’s comforting, familiar, like rain.

She does her own share of watching in return. Mainly, it seems like a regular settlement, if a bit on the egalitarian philosophy side. (It’s all bullshit, of course. Bring any group of people together and there’s always going to be a couple with influence and the rest doing what they’re told, but Charlie’s not interested in bursting their bubble.) They raise crops. They’ve got animals. They have a school set up.

The only real surprise is how they treat Noah.

For one thing, it seems like Hope’s the only one that’s bothered learning sign. The others either yell their words or make Noah write out what he wants to say on a notepad he carries around. Hope follows him wherever she can, but the kid gets tired and then he’s on his own.

It’s a strange way of dealing with the guy who clearly has the most useful ideas for the run of the place. There’s a couple other people who make big decisions with him, but Noah’s clearly the smart one. It seems arbitrary to exclude him when sign’s really pretty easy to learn.

She’s being naive, she realizes. She’s bought into their equality shit on some level. Of course they don’t respect Noah as they would if he could hear and talk. He’s different. Humans always hate those who are different.

She can’t let herself forget that. Kids may be grabbing her hands to pull her into their games now, but they’d run screaming if they saw her face. The men by her side on the guard towers would put a bullet in her brain.

It’s that thought that gets her to hunt down Noah once she’s been there almost two weeks.

It’s twilight, after dinner. He’s walking back to his place and he flinches when she taps his shoulder to get his attention.

What? he circles his hands in the air, tense.

I need to tell you something, she signs. It’s important.

OK, he agrees, immediately turning to give her his full attention. Guy’s a born leader. The others are such idiots.

She doesn’t bother with a preamble. If I die during the raid– He makes a noise of protest and his hands fly up, but she waves for him to be still. If I die, she repeats, I need you to bury me.

He nods, eyes wide. Of course. It’s the least we can do.

No, she pinches at the air. You need to bury me in a specific way. This is important, she emphasizes when he starts to nod again. Make it shallow. Dig out a foot of soil and then just put me in. No coffin. Understand?

Why?

She sighs. Just promise.

He hesitates for only a second. Promise. You won’t die.

She snorts and pats him on the shoulder again, sending him on his way. She turns, but he grabs her arm and signs, Thank you.

She shrugs and starts walking, turning back just enough to sign, You owe me gas, before she goes back to what she’s already started thinking of as her spot.

The raiders come in the middle of that night.

Fighting has always been easy for Charlie. That’s what she’s made for, after all. Tenderness and affection are foreign beasts, to be treated with suspicion and unease. But violence is easy. Taking things apart is different from putting them back together. It’s a relief to not hold back.

There’s around thirty raiders. Charlie climbs up onto the reinforced wall where she’s set up her rifle and starts shooting. The men are on horseback and not expecting sniper fire. They fall one after another like dry sticks. That part’s easy. Ignore the people around her and fire. Like a game. It’s easy to pick raiders off. The people around her are the good guys and the people she’s shooting at are bad and it’s so easy to cut them down.

Ignore the people around her starting to worry about why she’d be so good at this. Keep shooting until she’s out of bullets.

And then put her rifle aside and wait for the riders to reach the wall and then jump onto the first one’s saddle.

She moves too fast for them to really register. They see metal flashing, a pale shape with red hair landing on top of a rider and a bandanna slipping to reveal too many teeth biting through a throat. Blood and screams and frenzied whinnies.

The riders behind the leader try to pull up, but it’s too late. They shoot, of course. Of course they shoot her.

It doesn’t help.

She jumps from the first to the second, her short legs generating too much force as she knocks the man off of his mount even as he buries his blade in her stomach.

She looks up at the other raiders, blood dripping down her face and blending with her hair. They keep shooting, a couple of them. The rest flee. They’re the smart ones. They get to live.

The others scream about a monster as the monster jumps on them.

And then it’s over.

Charlie wipes her face off with her sleeve. There’s wide-eyed faces staring from the wall and she can picture what they see: her mouth too wide and too sharp, her eyes too bagged. They’ve got their rifles trained on her again. Of course they do. They can see her and the corpses and the confused, wounded horses galloping around. She spares them the trouble. She’s been shot three dozen times and stabbed in her gut. She falls to the side. Like dry sticks.

The last thing she hears is a collective sigh of relief from the settlement she just saved.

“In the old world, it wasn’t like this.”

Charlie rolls her eyes. “Because the old world was perfect.”

Jacob manages to give her an unimpressed look without actually making eye contact. “No, because in the old world, there were kids just like you.”

“And that’s awful, obviously, because I’m a monster,” she says, almost playful in her bitterness.

“You’re not–” He sighs, putting his hands up. “I can’t convince you of anything.”

“Tell me what you were gonna say.”

“You’re not listening–”

“I’m listening now! Please.” She makes her best approximation of a cute face. “Tell me what you were gonna say about the old world.”

He waits, nursing his coffee, making sure she’s willing to stay silent while he talks. Finally, he says, “I saw kids like you a lot back then. On the streets or in police departments. Hospitals. Prisons. Schools. I tried talking to them and they would stare at me and behind their eyes, there was just nothing. You could tell something had happened to them and the reason they’d survived was by going away, into themselves.

And all the bluster was just to hide their soul, the weak, soft parts, somewhere deep down.”

Charlie’s quiet for a while even after he stops talking. “And did people help them? In the old world. If they could see these kids were in pain. Did they help?”

Jacob moves his mouth in a rueful way that isn’t a smile. “No. Everyone just ignored them. Or wrote them off as bad. That was the solution. ‘Bad kids’.”

“Am I bad?” she asks, her voice suddenly small.

His face turns into something closer to a smile. “The worst.”

She moves to his side of the campfire and leans her head on his shoulder. In the smoke, she can see empty eyes. “But it was better back then?”

“I didn’t say that. It was just different.”

She opens her eyes in a coffin.

Fucking Noah, she thinks as she starts to claw at the splintering wood. At least he left her prosthetics on. The metal makes quick work of the lid and the dirt starts to flood in.

She’s an old hand at graves by now, but the six feet of dirt makes it difficult. She’s gasping for air by the time she crawls out.

It takes her a second to hear the screaming. She looks up, dirt caked on her face and her hair and inside her pockets because they buried her with her jacket, like the idiots they are. There’s a crowd around the gravesite. Kids are sobbing in terror. Hope’s staring at her, blank with shock. And then Noah. Closest to the grave.

“I told you, no coffin, ” she rasps, her signs loose and barely decipherable. He keeps staring at her with horror and something like concern. Empathy.

That’s his face. Everybody else is just terrified of her.

“What the fuck is she?” someone asks.

“What the fuck is that thing?”

“She was dead. She was covered in blood–”

“That’s a fucking monster–”

“I saw her bite those guys’ throats out–”

“--that’s not human–”

“Shoot her again!”

“That won’t keep her down–”

Noah’s back is to her as he looks around desperately, trying to catch everyone’s lips moving at the same time, but they’re talking over each other and Hope’s still staring at the grave, her hands still at her sides.

He waves for them to shut up, but of course they ignore him. Charlie gets to her feet and everyone takes a step back at once, rifles coming up.

She puts her hands up, slow and steady. She’s still out of breath from the grave, but if she makes a sudden move right now, they’ll plug her full of holes. You have to be real calm to convince people you’re not the monster. Kinda funny, that.

“I’ll go,” she says, signing slowly as she talks. “Lemme get my bike and my rifle and I’ll go.”

“You’re not getting back in there,” the loudest guy, the one who thinks he’s the leader, says, prodding the air with his rifle. That’s her rifle, she sees. Her sniper that she took months to remake. He’s pointing it at her.

“I just saved your asses,” she says, unable to keep the anger from her voice. “You’d be fucked if it wasn’ for me.”

He shoots, once, in her shoulder. She grunts, low, feeling more blood soak through her shirt. Everyone’s watching her, watching for any sign of pain, any weakness.

“See?” he says, triumphantly. “She didn’t even feel that. She’s fucking undead.”

“Jus’ gimme my rifle,” she whispers, to the dirt.

“Get the fuck outta here, freak.”

She looks at Noah. He stares back at her, confused and scared and unsure. So much for a fucking leader. He brings a fist up to his chest to apologize and she turns away before he can finish.

She can hear yells at her sudden movement as she starts to walk across the clearing, back towards the main road. She’s still got dirt all over her clothes. No bike. No gas. No gun. She pats her pockets for her Walkman. Motherfuckers took that too.

It takes her an hour to walk to the nearby woods and another half hour to stop screaming.

It’s the Walkman that does it, in the end. It’s hard to find tapes these days, especially ones in good condition. If they hadn’t taken it, she might have helped.

Probably not, but she might have, she tells herself later. It was their fault for pushing her. Their fault for chasing her off. They took her gun. What could she have done? What could she possibly have done to stop the riders coming back the next night as she watched from the treeline? What could she have done to stop the settlement burning, smoke threading into the night sky as the screams started?

They came back tenfold. Horses and guns. She had nothing. What was she supposed to do but watch as the settlement got razed?

Charlie waits until sunrise before walking back to the ruins.

She’s gotten most of the dirt out of her hair by then, but the ash falling down like snow dirties it again.

The steel foundations of the buildings are still standing, but that’s about it. Bodies litter the ground like weeds. The fence is completely gone. Some little fires still haven’t petered out.

It’s a sight as familiar as the sky.

It doesn’t take much for her to find her bike, beat up and ashy but mostly intact. She finds the rifle still clutched in the man’s severed arm and it almost feels like a victory. Next to him, Hope’s eyes are open. She tries not to notice that.

The raiders didn’t steal most of the gas, only as much as it took to burn down the settlement. She’s siphoning off the rest when she hears a low moan behind her and whirls around.

Noah’s there, his clothes dripping wet. He must have been hiding in the river. His eyes are wide and empty and he’s got blood along the side of his head. He looks around him like he’s seeing the world for the first time.

Charlie nods and tightens the lid on her gas tank, hauling it towards the bike.

He stumbles up, grabbing at her sleeve like a child. She has to shut her eyes for a second. (Don’t think of the kids. Do not think of the kids.) What? she waves.

You didn’t help. His eyes are huge and not even accusatory. He’s just broken.

She doesn’t have time to put him back together. Not when she’s finally allowing herself to be pissed. Neither did you! she throws back. What was I supposed to do!?

You didn’t need a gun, he signs, desperation making his hands shake. You could have scared them off, you could have–

She grabs at his hands, keeping them still until he stops trying to move them, dissolving into silent sobs, and then she pulls him in and holds him until he stops.

That’s the extent of what she’s willing to do. She pushes him off, not unkindly, and turns back to her bike, only for him to grab her sleeve again. What am I supposed to do now? he asks.

She could say a lot of things. She could say that it was only a matter of time until the people he led decided a cripple wasn’t a good use of resources. Or that he was too uppity. Or that they just didn’t need him anymore, or that he was a monster, or that they didn’t have enough food for everybody.

She signs, You live. After a second, she brings her fist to her chest to say, Sorry.

He shakes his head. Can I come with you?

She shakes her head in return, giving him a look. You know you can’t.

He grabs at her. Why not!?

Because eventually, you’d think your neighbors were right about me, she tells him, not realizing how honest she’s going to be until she starts moving her hands. Because I’ve been alive a long time. And when you realize what staying alive means, if you’re with me, you’d lash out and I’d have to put you down and I don’t want another person on my conscience.

He lets her turn back to her bike, fill up the tank, put her rifle in the holster, and climb on. She can see him from the corner of her eye, signing, You’re a monster. She looks away, so she won’t have to kill him.

She takes the Walkman from Hope’s pocket. Shame. She would’ve let the kid keep it if she’d asked.

She puts The Doors tape in. It’s almost through the mix. Hope must have been listening through it.

As Charlie makes her way back across the wasteland, leaving the ruined remains of a settlement and a man’s empty eyes behind her, Jim Morrison sings that people are strange when you’re a stranger.

She’s never been anything else.

BOBBY TWO WINDS

Bobby Two Winds wasn’t supposed to be riding the pick-up truck that dropped him off at Pillow Creek River. He wasn’t supposed to be on the ferry that floated him past some of the soggiest, blackest, sorriest forest he’d smelled in his life. And he sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be lying in a dirty top bunk on his twenty-first birthday a hundred miles from home, listening to a snaggle-toothed, four-fingered log jockey named Heath Stutts jack himself off to sticky pictures of woodland sprites.

But he’d fucked up. Again. And Uncle Charlie had done what he’d threatened to do the next time he fucked up. He shipped his ass off to Ned Boman’s Logging Camp, which is what his folks, Bobby’s grandparents, had done to him when he’d fucked up.

Except Bobby Two Winds had really fucked up.

They only got palefaces to come out to Pillow Creek to teach the kids about once every five school lotteries, and Bobby had got the paleface sent back. It wasn’t the funny way the teacher from Seattle was walking when he left the school house, or the fact that Bobby was putting in a bunch of extra janitorial hours at a job he hated. What actually got them talking was ten-year-old Sarah Brown Guzman opening up the equipment closet one day and finding the paleface sucking on Bobby’s big brown cock like it was a Tootsie pop with three of Bobby’s thick brown fingers wedged into his ass. When word got around, the elders called a meeting and shipped both of them out. The paleface went back home to Seattle and Bobby went to Ned Boman’s to log his baser instincts out of his blood.

“You wake up and do your job,” Uncle Charlie had said before the ferry carried Bobby off. “You eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you can’t stand. Just don’t you take your dick out of your pants.” Uncle Charlie loved Bobby Two Winds. Bobby Two Winds still wasn’t sure about that.

“The next time a paleface tries to suck on it,” Uncle Charlie said, “you look at this. Because that’s what you could get.”

It was a picture of a very homely, very tall and haughty white man with a huge tumor on his penis. The man was smiling proudly, almost as if he’d won an award for his disfigurement.

Two weeks later, lying in his bunk bed at Ned Boman’s listening to Heath Stutts jerk off, Bobby was still thinking of the arrogant white man with the huge tumor on his penis. It didn’t seem at all fair to Bobby that Stutts would jerk himself off while he was in the room, but he was long used to that by now. In the country where he was born and raised, the land he loved more than any other, you could be six-foottwo and have eighteen-inch biceps and a cock like one of Ned Boman’s logs, and still people wouldn’t notice you if you had skin like Bobby’s.

The next morning Bobby met the other loggers in the mess hall. Stutts was among them. The breakfast wasn’t bad. The loggers weren’t unfriendly. When the foreman, Wentz, came by Bobby’s cabin with Bobby’s contract later that morning, Bobby wasn’t looking at his six-month stretch at Boman’s camp as a punishment anymore.

“You signing this means you leave before your six months are up, you forfeit your wages,” Wentz said.

Wentz studied Bobby, understood that Bobby didn’t get it and said, “We pay you every six months.”

“What do I do for things?” Bobby asked.

“What things?”

Bobby glanced over at Stutts’ cot.

Wentz said, “Pornography?”

“Coca-Cola.”

“You bring it with you.”

Uncle Charlie had given Bobby ten dollars. Bobby’s hand crept around to his pants pocket to make sure it was still there. He began to finger the photo of the penis tumor man instead.

Wentz said, “You’re going to be partnering with Charleroi today. Charleroi is a good boy from Ottawa. He speaks English. He’ll show you what you got to do and how you got to do it. Just don’t ask him about his mama.”

Wentz could see that Bobby hadn’t been listening to a word he’d said. Though he didn’t pity Bobby Two Winds, he could see why some would be led in that direction.

“I said don’t ask about Charleroi’s mother,” Wentz said. “What are you doing down there with your hand, Bobby?”

Bobby took out Uncle Charlie’s picture.

“Holy black Jesus,” Wentz said. “What the hell is that?”

“This is what you can get if you stick your cock in a white man’s mouth.” Wentz backed away from Bobby’s hand as if the photo bore a contagious family curse. “Don’t take that out ever again,” Wentz said. “You remember what I said.”

But Bobby had already forgotten.

\Charleroi wasn’t much older than Bobby. He didn’t speak much English, but Bobby didn’t care. Charleroi had a beautiful face and an ass that Bobby couldn’t drive from his thoughts. Every time he thought about burying his cock inside Charleroi’s ass, he just thought of the man with the tumor on his penis. It worked for a while. Then, when they were out in a part of the woods where the voices of the others were just distant echoes, Bobby got too close to Charleroi and Charleroi felt Bobby’s hardness against his thigh and turned on him.

Charleroi wasn’t angry, but he looked at Bobby in a new light, and shook his head. Bobby was confused and his cock was too hard. Reaching into his pants pocket to consult the penis tumor man was out of the question. Wentz’s words of warning came to mind in a flash, but somehow jumbled up. Bobby wasn’t sure what to do and said, “So what happened to your mama?”

What happened next is that Charleroi collapsed onto the forest floor in a fetal ball of flannel and denim. A long line of French Canadian gibberish came out. When he’d wept the pain away temporarily, Charleroi came up at Bobby with an uppercut that drove Bobby’s teeth together like self-playing piano keys. By the time Charleroi was done with Bobby, Bobby wasn’t sure what day it was or what part of the world he happened to be in.

He woke in the infirmary with bruises all over his stomach and a swollen tongue. Wentz was there with a younger nurse named Anderson.

“You asked Charleroi about his mama, didn’t you?” Wentz said.

Anderson said, “You’re lucky, Bobby. He hit you where it wouldn’t show.”

“What about that tongue?” Wentz said.

“Bobby will be back to swallowing normal by tomorrow morning,” Anderson said.

“Alright,” Wentz said.

“But he’d better spend the night here,” Anderson said. “Just in case it swells back up.”

Wentz, who held Bobby’s training card in his hand, said, “As long as the boy is back to chopping wood by tomorrow, we’ll be ok. Mr. Boman is flying in in the morning to choose the crew for this year’s greased alligator tussle.”

That night was much better for Bobby, buried deep inside Anderson’s throbbing pink asshole. They found other uses for Bobby’s swollen tongue that Anderson swore he’d never forget. Bobby and Anderson fucked so many hours that night that when Bobby woke and had his shower, he realized he would be meeting Mr. Boman on perhaps three hours’ sleep.

Anderson was washing Bobby’s cock and asshole when reveille sounded. At the sound of the amplified horn, Bobby jumped out of the shower and towel-dried his long, hard, brown body.

Out of the shower, Bobby Two Winds’ erection was terrifying. Just the sight of it forced Anderson down onto his knees like one of Pavlov’s dogs. It wasn’t easy for Bobby to refuse Anderson, but he did. He begged off, dragging Anderson, who would not give up his grip on Bobby’s thigh, all the way back to his bed.

“You’ve got to stop this,” Bobby said.

“Why on earth do I?” Anderson said.

Bobby got out Uncle Charlie’s picture.

“Because if I put this thing in your mouth, it could turn into this.”

Anderson had seen mutilations beyond number and earthly explanation. He’d seen men holding their cross-cut intestines like a woman holding a dress to ford a puddle. He’d seen penile medical anomalies at the logging camp that were more unsettling than the God’s worst deep sea fuck-ups. But the photo Bobby was showing him now was worse, far worse. Anderson was so startled by the penis tumor man that he bit down on his own tongue.

“I’m sorry,” Bobby said.

A minute later he was dressed and out the door.

Bobby got his breakfast at the mess hall and sat down across from Charleroi. Charleroi was eating his sausage and eggs with a seasonal logger named Benoit and another logger with a strange shiny plate in his head. Stutts came in late and sat down across from Bobby, next to the man with the plate in his head.

“Don’t fuck with my magazine,” Stutts said.

Bobby couldn’t tell if Stutts was talking to him or Benoit. In any case, he hadn’t touched the magazine. He’d only looked at it.

“Where do you get your things from anyway?” Bobby said.

“My pornography?”

“Your Coca-Cola.”

Commissary,” Stutts said. “What happened to your goddamn tongue, Bobby?”

Bobby explained what Anderson had made him do. Stutts almost picked up his plate and moved away. Benoit looked at Bobby, though he understood even less English than Charleroi. He watched Bobby eat.

Stutts said, “It just ain’t clean, Bobby.”

Bobby knew this to be a falsehood. Anderson’s asshole was cleaner than clean. It was cleaner than what was behind his own ear. Anderson’s asshole was so clean it tasted almost like a gamy Christmas lamb, and he’d jammed his swollen tongue into Anderson almost as far as Anderson’s prostate, so if there was anything nasty to find in there, he’d have found it.

“Plus,” Stutts said, glaring at Charleroi. “You’re giving Washington State a bad name when you let these frogs beat on your ass. Who the fuck cares about Charleroi’s mama anyway? I sure don’t.”

It was Benoit who stood and beat Stutts over the head with a box of hard cheese from his hometown of Thunder Bay. Benoit carried that box of cheese everywhere, even on his cutting trips. The weight of the box wasn’t much. It was the ferocity and suddenness of the attack that confused Stutts and left his mouth a sitting duck. Benoit decked Stutts hard enough to break a two-by-four, clearing Stutts’ upper teeth away like a line of dominoes. He pronged Stutts’ biceps with his egg fork and left in disgust.

Stutts was puzzled but not greatly hurt.

“Fuck your mama too, Benoit,” Stutts said, and he began collecting his teeth off the floor.

Bobby took Uncle Charlie’s ten dollars and broke it at the commissary. A stocky man with hooded poker eyes sat on the other side of the counter with a steel money box. He wore a money belt around his waist and had paper money of various denominations glued to the wall in as many varieties as cigars in a cigar store. The man didn’t introduce himself. He studied Bobby though.

“I want a cola,” Bobby said.

“One dollar,” the man said.

“I could buy a magazine for a dollar,” Bobby said.

“No, you couldn’t.”

“Give me a cola then.”

The man gave Bobby a cola. He also offered Bobby a magazine. He said, “I got some weird shit back here.”

Bobby knew that to be the truth. He’d seen Stutts’ erotic tree nymphs. He also knew this man didn’t know what weird was.

“You want to see weird?” Bobby said.

Bobby brought out Uncle Charlie’s photo.

The man studied the penis tumor man for a while in silent contemplation. He remarked on the film grain and observed the contrast and composition. He asked Bobby to hold the photo up to the sunlight streaming into the commissary. “I believe that is some very weird shit indeed,” he concluded. “You selling?”

Bobby hadn’t thought about selling Uncle Charlie’s photo. For many reasons really. First among them, he needed it to keep the white man’s lips off his dick. Besides that, it wasn’t his to sell. He’d only borrowed it, and from what he knew of Uncle Charlie and his possessions, the old man would certainly be expecting it back.

But all those Coca-Colas in the man’s cola cooler spoke to him, too. The longnecks looked like they were sweating pure caramel. At a buck a cola, his money wouldn’t last him very long. Exactly ten colas’ long, in fact. Bobby couldn’t sell Uncle Charlie’s photo, but who was to say he couldn’t make a temporary gift of it?

“I tell you what,” Bobby said. “I’ll lend it to you for a week. How about that?” The man thought briefly on this new offer, of his actual prospects of renting the penis tumor man out and opening up a peepshow at the camp for, say, a week. In the end, he decided against it. There were just too many wild cards in that deck.

“I’ll give you a hundred,” he said.

“I can’t give it away,” Bobby said.

“Seems to me you could and you should. That photo is bad mojo for men who can still use what they got.”

It was then that Bobby realized the man wasn’t wearing a money belt, but that his body ended at the belt. The man was only a torso, upper limbs and a head. The belt held him in place like a human-sized parcel of butcher’s meat.

Bobby wondered how the man had gotten onto his stool at all. He scanned the ceiling, noting a hole in the corkboard where a vent should have been. He doubted the man had crawled onto his stool through the ceiling.

“Have you got a wheelie board anywhere back there?” Bobby asked the man.

The man chuckled, but it was clear that had he been even one-legged, he would have beaten Bobby Two Winds senseless with the leg.

“Left it at home I’m afraid.”

“Lawrence McPhee lost both his legs canning tuna at the Shogun Tuna Factory in Queets,” Bobby continued. “They call him Chief No Legs because of that. But boy can he get around on a wheelie board.”

“What a shame,” the man said.

“Not really,” Bobby said. “Man can get around.”

“I’ll give you two hundred dollars. That’s my last and final offer.”

But Bobby didn’t hear any part of the offer. The tut-tut-tut of high-grade propeller steel had swept the man’s words away. Bobby felt a strong wind at his back and turned just in time to see the whole camp whirling in what looked to be a tornado of damp leaves, dirt, and log shavings. A helicopter landed in the middle of the debris, idled a moment and cut power.

“Looks like Ned’s early this year,” the man said. “If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me.”

Most of the loggers had already assembled when Wenzt’s alert went out over the PA system. Others were just now racing in. They stood straight. Looked straight ahead. Their hot muscles twitched in anticipation of the seasonal inspection. At the head of the line was Wentz with his clipboard and training cards.

Ned Boman stepped from the helicopter with his assistant, Jobs, a young Southern man in red chrome ear muffs. Jobs wore a sharp plaid shirt and khakis. Boman was in white boating shorts that showed his thick, bronzed calves and a network of veins he had put there over a lifetime of vigorous sporting. Boman’s shoulder-length mane of silver hair put even Charleroi’s fat black curls to shame.

Boman inspected all the loggers up from where Wentz stood to the very end of the line. He dictated notes to Jobs. From these notes Jobs would select his Praetorian Guard. These were the biggest, fiercest men at Boman’s camp, the very ones who would compete in Boman’s annual greased alligator tussle. It was the highlight of Boman’s visit, though the old lion couldn’t help but notice how low morale was this year, despite Jobs’ individual and group pep talks.

Bobby was at the very end of the line next to Benoit. When Boman and Jobs got to Bobby, Boman stopped. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” Boman said to Bobby Two Winds. “What does your daddy call you?”

“My daddy’s dead,” Bobby said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Boman said. “I bet he was proud of you. What’s your name, son?” “Bobby Two Winds.”

“Bobby Two Winds, make a muscle for your new daddy.”

Bobby raised one of his arms over his head like he’d seen Robby Robinson do on TV at one of Uncle Charlie’s Saturday fish fries. He perched the other arm at his hip and flexed both.

“Make sure he’s on my list,” Boman told Jobs and Jobs added Bobby Two Winds to the Praetorian Guard.

Boman gave a short pep talk of his own and then boarded the helicopter with Jobs and they flew across the camp to Boman’s private cabin, Barbarossa.

That evening Stutts was beating his meat real hard. He was making faint whistling noises through his busted teeth that sounded to Bobby like the wheezing of a broken tea kettle. When Stutts came, he shouted out a name: Carmine LePine. He grunted that name out and then put his magazine and his meat away.

“You got busted up pretty bad today,” Bobby said.

“Look who’s talking,” Stutts said. “At least I stood up for myself.”

Bobby didn’t see how getting beaten over the head with cheese and then getting stabbed in the arm with a fork was a good example of that, but Stutts had grit, you couldn’t deny that.

“How many years have you been logging with Mr. Boman, Heath?” Bobby asked.

“Seven seasons,” Stutts said.

“You ever tussled a gator?” Bobby said.

“Once,” Stutts said.

“Was it any good?”

“Mr. Piupiumaksmaks has got a tiny ball sack,” Stutts said. “You’ve got to rub that sack as soon as you want to break free. You rub it good and he’ll let you go. You don’t and you’ll get your ass bit off. That’s the trick.”

“So you won that time?” Bobby said.

“Hell no,” Stutts said. “I knew better than to win.”

“What’s wrong with winning?” Bobby said.

“Barbarossa,” Stutts said.

At Pillow Creek Bobby was known to be a pretty tough customer. He figured he could take an alligator, especially with the advice Stutts had given him. He started practicing his moves after dinner. At night he listened to Stutts jerk off to forest elves who reminded him of Carmine LePine.

By the end of the week, Stutts’ replacement teeth had come in the mail, but they were blue, like a boxer’s mouthguard, and Stutts sent them back. Bobby decided he was going to beat Mr. Piupiumaksmaks for Stutts, who had stood up for him in the mess hall and gotten his teeth knocked out by a Canadian.

The next day was Sunday, the day of the gator tussle. Boman and Jobs flew in from Barbarossa with Mr. Piupiumaksmaks after lunch. Mr. Piupiumaksmaks lay in a wooden crate made from shipping pallets and reinforced with iron bars. He was groaning or growling in there and looking all keyed up.

Jobs dragged Mr. Piupiumaksmaks down from the helicopter on a hand dolly. He placed the crate in the center of a fire pit and then unlatched the front gate. Mr. Piupiumaksmaks crawled out like the greasy end of a rib.

Around the pit stood the loggers, who had the afternoon off. They sipped from steaming mugs of boiled sumac beer that Charleroi had brewed himself. They watched Mr. Piupiumaksmaks creep around. Ned Boman stood at the head of the gathering with a bullhorn. One by one he called out the Praetorian Guard.

The Praetorian Guard were tough customers too. You could tell just by looking at them that they had no need for slick footwork. They were used to getting hit by things. Wood, bricks, steel, falling walls. Many had spent time in jail on both sides of the border. That afternoon they were naked from the waist up just like professional wrestlers or Roman gladiators.

Bobby knew none of the men personally, except for the Canadian logger with the plate in his head. His name was Duvernoy. But Bobby didn’t really even know Duvernoy. Duvernoy went first.

Duvernoy didn’t even make it into the pit. Mr. Piupiumaksmaks snapped at Duvernoy’s toes and Duvernoy crapped his drawers and went to the creek to wash.

It didn’t get much better than that. Only one of the Praetorian Guard managed to slip down onto the ground with Mr. Piupiumaksmaks and engage him in a fair fight. This was a young man from Montana with a fierce underbite and a long list of library fines he’d inherited from a deceased relative. His name was Orvus.

Orvus gripped Mr. Piupiumaksmaks around the head straight away and put the sleeper choke on him. Mr. Piupiumaksmaks didn’t fall asleep, however. In fact, Mr. Piupiumaksmaks whipped his hundred-and-twenty-pound tail at Orvus so hard that Orvus released his grip and shouted out that Mr. Piupiumaksmaks had delivered a death stroke. Jobs had no choice but to shoot Mr. Piupiumaksmaks with a tranquilizer dart. Orvus was dragged off to the clinic.

It was another hour before the competition resumed. Mr. Piupiumaksmaks seemed more irascible and jittery than ever and now it was Bobby Two Winds’ turn.

Straight away, Bobby distracted Mr. Piupiumaksmaks with some fancy footwork. He threw his voice into the trees. It was his famed eagle call. For the next minute or so, Ned Boman’s forest rang out with a cacophony of Bobby’s invisible flying assassins. Mr. Piupiumaksmaks stopped moving. He began to emit low preemptive growls, which Bobby knew signaled an opening in his defenses. His eagle call had worked.

Bobby didn’t go for the lower tail as the rest had done. He went straight for Mr. Piupiumaksmaks’ ball sack like Stutts had told him to do. To get in position, he first enveloped Mr. Piupiumaksmaks in a rugged embrace with his eighteen-inch biceps and all the crushing force of his gigantic frame.

Mr. Piupiumaksmaks gave in almost immediately to Bobby’s strength, first wheezing, then making pitiful feline noises that seemed to emanate from the pit of his stomach. It was clear to both Jobs and Boman that if Bobby kept squeezing, he would asphyxiate Mr. Piupiumaksmaks. Still, Boman didn’t call the match. He watched in astonishment.

Bobby released his grip incrementally before reaching for Mr. Piupiumaksmaks’ balls. At that point in the match, there was a brief whirlwind of mud and leaves and sawdust just like when Ned Boman had landed his helicopter. The strange humanreptile embrace flipped and jangled and jittered and flopped. At the end of it Bobby was hauled back off to the clinic to join Orvus.

He woke late in the evening on a cot in a warm wood cabin. The sheets smelled just like clean socks fresh out of the dryer. Out front was Ned Boman’s helicopter, but Boman himself wasn’t around, only Jobs.

Jobs was sipping an Old Fashioned out of a short, wide glass. He got up from the couch he was sitting on to check on Bobby. A raging fire was on and Jobs was shirtless.

“He missed your artery,” Jobs said. “But just.”

Bobby felt his shoulder. There was a wide wound on the right side near the collarbone. When Bobby pressed the wound, he could feel the pain shooting all the way down into his leg.

Jobs said, “You’re going to need a little plastic surgery. Mr. Piupiumaksmaks took a chunk out. Why on earth did you grab that gator’s balls?”

Bobby explained what Stutts had told him and Jobs chuckled. Jobs had a soft Southern lilt even when he laughed. Bobby felt his own giant balls just to make sure they were still there. He felt his pockets next.

“Don’t worry,” Jobs said. “I’ve got your picture right here. What’s your poison, Bobby?”

“Coca-cola,” Bobby said.

Jobs got a bottle from the wet bar.

Bobby sucked the cola right down. When he was done and feeling good and gassy, he got up from the cot and had a walk about the cabin.

It was just one big room with rafters at least twenty feet high. But the timber walls were solid so they kept the heat well enough. There was a jacuzzi tub in the far right corner of the room and it was purring gently.

A table of grilled autumn vegetables and game meats had already been set. The wet bar was next to the table. Running the length of the wall behind the bar were two decades’ worth of oiled gator tusslers, framed and mounted. Bobby had a look at those, too.

When Ned Boman came in out of the woods, Jobs was in his bikini underwear working on his third Old Fashioned. Boman fixed a drink for himself, pulled off his shirt and shorts and jumped naked into the jacuzzi. He called Bobby Two Winds over. Jobs gave Bobby another free bottle of cola for his bath.

At the tub’s edge, Bobby slipped out of his smock. Jobs shook his head in wonderment and started talking about boo-shit tea.

Boman said, “A man would need a whole lot of boo-shit tea before he tussled with that gator, wouldn’t he, Steve?”

When Bobby had settled into the tub across from Boman, Boman stood. Where his own greased gator should have been there was nothing at all. Boman was as smooth as a baby angel. The only sign of Boman’s erstwhile manhood was a ridged scar about the size and shape of a dog bite and the color of boiled crab meat.

“There are few things I miss more in life than my manhood,” Boman began. “But life goes on. Yes, Bobby, even after a tumor on your cock the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, it goes on. You survive.”

Boman sat back down, smoothing water over his castrated lap.

“I was just like that man in your photo, Bobby, but it wasn’t a white man’s lips that did it. Steve, bring me 1989.”

Jobs went to the wet bar, unhooked a photo and brought it back to the tub. It was the legless man at the commissary, except in this photo he had both his legs. He had rippling arms almost as big as Bobby’s and a chest of a piece.

Boman said, “Linus McCann was the only one of my boys who ever managed to give Mr. Piupiumaksmaks a run for his money. It was when I brought him out to Barbarossa that the trouble began.”

Boman explained that it was all a misunderstanding really. When he’d offered to accept Linus McCann’s prize cock up his oiled and beckoning asshole McCann’s fair prize McCann had gotten enraged and challenged Boman to a Canadian long saw fight. Both men were drunk. This was so long ago that Jobs was just a boy at the time and not working for Boman yet. The upshot was that in a drunken haze, Boman had sawed McCann off below the waist. To make amends for his accidental savagery, Boman vowed to put McCann on a stool and keep him gainfully employed for the rest of his natural life. After all, both men were drunk. Nothing could be proven in a court of law.

These emoluments seemed to have assuaged the gods, Boman said, until two years later, when Boman was stricken down in his prime with the worst kind of vengeance. Less than a month later, he’d lost his manhood to the root. “But I’ve talked too much,” Boman said. “Let’s put some meat in our blood.”

Boman let Bobby Two Winds exit the tub first, marveling at the smoothness of his cloven ass cheeks. Since Bobby was the guest of honor, he sat at the head of the table in his smock. Jobs had mostly deserted his clothes by now. It was only Boman, who had the most to hide, who refused to cover his shame. He ate standing, sharing his neuterment with the world.

Boman made a toast. “Rich blood is blood that fires the loins. The richest, hottest blood comes from these meats we have set our table with. Tusked swine and this one-eyed deer I myself shot from the outhouse just this morning. Amen.”

The men dug in. Bobby couldn’t recall if he’d ever tasted meat so fine as Boman’s one-eyed deer. He filled his cheeks.

“Most men find it odd that I shoot while I’m on the shitter,” Boman went on. “But let me ask you this. When are you more concentrated and precise than when you’re on the shitter? My blood and my breath are even and whole. I stretch my shooting finger at my haul like there is an invisible spirit line holding us tight. I can think of few things better or truer than that.”

The men were hungry from a day of tussling and cleared the platter of game meats in no time. Then went the roasted squash and the glazed sweet potatoes and the chestnut-and-swine stuffed forest mushrooms. Boman and Jobs drank spiked eggnog and a few pitchers of sumac beer and then brought out the sweet meats and trotters and a decanter of fine Portuguese cognac. Bobby satisfied his thirst with one cola after another.

It was at that point in the evening that Boman retired to the couch before the fireplace and had Jobs oil his asshole with the same mixture he’d used on Mr. Piupiumaksmaks, except tonight at Barbarossa he called it a tonic. Jobs was thorough in his work, kneading the tender meat of Boman’s inner sphincter until Boman purred like a mountain lion. When Boman was good and oiled, he called Bobby Two Winds over.

“Bobby,” Boman said, “I know better than to ask you to fill my can. I learned that lesson in 1989 when I sawed Linus McCann in half. But I will not have you refuse my hospitality outright, not while you’re a resident of Barbarossa.

If you truly fear the white man’s lips, by all means refuse your oral reward. But at the very least I insist on servicing you with the balls of my feet.”

Truthfully, Bobby didn’t know how the old lion was going to manage that, but he did know this. He had a decision to make, a question to answer. Did he trust Uncle Charlie or did he trust his own hot balls? Because his balls surely knew how good a pair of lips felt on his dick, young or old, white, black, brown or blue.

A wave of relief washed over Bobby when he realized the essential truth of his balls. He stuck his fat hard brown cock out and waited for Boman to close his lips over it, while behind Jobs worked his own meat into the old lion’s hot, oiled asshole.

Boman couldn’t fit the whole of Bobby into his jaw, so he babied Bobby’s swollen head. When his jaw and cheeks began to ache, he sucked on Bobby’s king-sized shaft sideways. Then he did something below the balls that set Bobby’s whole body to shaking. He repeated the whole sacrament many times over until Bobby felt like his hot come was being sucked up out of the depths of his jacuzzi-wrinkled ass.

When Bobby and Jobs came together, Boman shook like a rooster. He took Bobby’s offering deep in his throat, while Jobs filled his ass with his cognac-and-venisonenriched load. Boman waited on all fours a good minute dripping plentifully out of two orifices before pronouncing the night a whopping success.

The next day Boman paid Bobby his wages early, all six months, and sent him home with an invitation to come back for next year’s greased gator tussle. Back at the cabin, Bobby packed and put on a pair of comfortable jeans because the trip back to Pillow Creek was going to be a long and tiring one. Stutts was jerking off on his bunk. Bobby could barely see Stutts’ meat through his fist.

He walked up to Stutts and slugged him hard in the teeth. Stutts’ lowers sprang out like the last few kernels of popping corn in a skillet.

“You lied to me,” Bobby said.

“So what?” Stutts said.

“That gator could have killed me.”

“It’s a gator. What the hell did you expect?”

Bobby thought on that a minute, but the truth is, he didn’t really know what he’d expected. He said, “Pick up your goddamn teeth.” He gathered the rest of his things out of the closet and made his bed as he’d found it the first day. Then he just stood there looking around.

“Well, I guess this is it,” Bobby said.

Stutts couldn’t find more than two of his lowers. He was searching the springs under Bobby’s mattress now.

“I said I guess this is it,” Bobby repeated.

“You keep your hands off my magazine,” Stutts said.

“I never touched that magazine and never will,” Bobby said.

The ferry ride back to Pillow Creek was soothing and fine-smelling with the wind blowing the river smells back at Ned Boman’s camp. Bobby Two Winds breathed it all in.

There was a moment of soul-wrenching fear when the ferry cut its engine and they floated to dock, when Bobby understood the whole trip had been for naught. But all he had to do is remember the truth of his balls and the terror subsided. What had happened in the equipment closet at Pillow Creek Elementary School seemed not to matter so much at all.

Uncle Charlie took Bobby straight from the ferry landing to Gorman’s Cooler on the county road. He loaded up his ice bucket with cheap bottled beer and a 16-ounce box of wigglers. When they got to Pillow Creek and had their fishing lines set up over Uncle Charlie’s favorite fishing hole, Uncle Charlie cracked a beer. Uncle Charlie was into his third bottle when he asked for the picture of the penis tumor man back.

They fished in silence a while until the shade started to cool over into genuine cold on their hands. It was nearing winter and only natural. They caught nothing but a half-starved black crappie that had lost its way. Uncle Charlie had one beer left. He cracked it.

Uncle Charlie said, “It didn’t work, did it?”

Bobby shook his head no. The last of the day had already broken over their fishing hole in a deep salmon explosion that billowed out towards the horizon in streaks of wintery blue. Uncle Charlie watched the streaks.

“Didn’t work for me neither,” Uncle Charlie said. They waited a few minutes more for the day to bleed out and then packed up their things and got back in the truck and drove home while the night caught fire overhead and everything beautiful that had been there during the day switched off for a few hours until it was time to start all over again.

CHAPS AND BULLETS

wrong kind of shootout

won without thinking

steer licking horse kicking

funny bunny girlie farm

pretty lonestar silver

bow legged buck toothed

sun bleached blonde

whiskey limp

pistol whipped

hipdraw at sundown

safety shot

corner pocket

barrel racer

buckle bunny belt loops

worn thin

slit the pig cattle prod mud caked boots

hat tipped low

hips drawn in

empty silo

bolo tie

flannel soaked

dukes chafed

spur scars

rodeo clown

aged cowboy

beer breath

first place ribbons

solid trophies

kissing cousins

aren’t funny

HIGH NOON

When I hear shoot your shot I think hipdraw on horseback. Standoff at dusk. Shootoff at dawn. Gunsmoke as foreplay. Metal burn as main course. Pistol fucking as sloppy seconds. When I hear shoot your shot I stand with my chest out, copper blue bolo tie the brightest thing about me.

Make eyes at the black suede cowboy hat more than the man wearing it. Commit to paying a month’s rent for cowboy boots. Let fear and desire kiss with tongue at the weight of a gun in the palm of my hand.

When I hear shoot your shot I think russian roulette while riding cowgirl. I think I have to say cowgirl so you know what I mean but really I mean bucking bronc. Hip bounce.

Twisting nasty to get a reaction. I mean the click of an empty barrel and blown wide eyes. I mean threat. No risk assessment.

All dirty dare. Muddy boots on motel bed. Stetson hanging off the nightstand. Springs squeaking and tv fuzzing and light shining on sweat dripping.

When I hear shoot your shot I think of playing hooky with body heat. Saddle, stirrups, spurs. Chaps. Assless goes without saying, real cowpokes know. Real cowboys

use a cattle-prod. Barbed wire. Loose lead. Fitted halter.

Tight tack. Head stall. Bridle. By now the gun should’ve gone off.

Someone got distracted. Cleared the cartridge.

Not even powder burn from the muzzle to soothe me.

I WILL NEVER BE A COWBOY

though i spent much of my life trying. chased the barrels like i’d never known the rush of dizziness. clutched the mane of a living thing like we were one and the same. somewhere in a box left in my childhood home are all the ribbons i might have won. somewhere in a landfill are all the ribbons i won and lost. somewhere in my mother’s attic is a horse with a broken leg porcelain showing through paint where it hit the ground after leaving my father’s violent hand. all it would take is a ring of glue and care in setting to fix the figurine. i want BEST IN SHOW for refusing to break my aunt’s mustang colt. ALL AROUND COWBOY for never knowing when to quit or how to start. BREAKAWAY ROPING for perfect timing without the cruelty of a fall. i want to bet on the fat chance and win by a nose without pushing an animal beyond its limits. i want the rush without the race. the cowboy hat tucked down for that sheepish shot like all the western boys were the first to ever blush. i want to step to the second rung of a rickety wood fence so i can lean over and kiss another cowboy. i want the metal coil to brand my hip, not the livestock. let’s open up all the pens, let the animals roam free. let’s pile the hay and pretend it’s soft enough to lay on. open the hatch in the hayloft and look out at the stars even though you never see a cowboy at night. let’s pretend i’m the roughed up cowboy and you’re the buckle bunny and we’re just gonna have a little fun.

we can pretend i’ve never heard the squeal of a dying thing and you believe me when i tell you who i am and who i’m not. let’s pretend the heat of the sun is a stadium light and the crow of the cock is the crowd cheering me on. i want to touch the horns of a bull and promise that i’ll never make it buck. let the fury steam doused in cold water, touch nose to wet snout. i’ve always been my worst animal. once, i kept a ring between my two nostrils and promised not to pull.

I’M ALL PISTOLS, NO HOLSTERS

what do i desire? an impossible transgression more like penance than punishment

i’m sick at heart, stuck in a cultural no man's land leaking memory like milky images of a heaven i’ll never find

i’m the one person in the world who knows what this goes like and i live it til i’m hoarse jay walking in the rain

all i want is someone to hold and hold onto instead i’m gravity’s plaything stuck down here with the rest of you

i was born impatient selling horses, barebacked or bronze

i can get real country real fast live in automation alley with soft hands and clean nails

but a year can make the difference start with a little itty bitty bit of corn end up owning all of corn country become a man of dust and hunger

it’s hard to tell who'll love you best so place your bets and let the house win you can’t escape your blood.

WHILE IN THE WILD WEST

do as the Romans do. Isn’t that how it goes? So let’s fast. We’ve got plenty of food at home. There’ll be plenty more when I’m through. I shaped myself myself; took my face in my hands and pulled. Pried open my mouth, wiggled my tongue, saw how far my lips could stretch. I would’ve made a great rodeo clown. An even better buckin’ bronc. I can’t stand the rope they use to make those ponies dance, but the thrill of the reign in your hand and air beneath your ass is one you just can’t beat. Almost did barrel racing. Could’ve been a buckle bunny. Still dream of inheriting my aunt’s farm, the one she sold along with the horses to eat. Take that whatever way you want. We’re in the Wild West, it’s rough out here. There’s a great big campfire and a tin of beans. Careful not to strike your teeth. Don’t let the fire getcha. If you do get singed just brush it off, but if you let a spark catch grass you’ll go along with it. There’s twelve steps to the loft and a shotgun hanging beneath it. There’s two pigs who will never see the sky without being held up, and there’s the poem us cowboys will never read about the pig being gifted the stars. Here, we trace their wet snouts, wonder what they think about, get our hands smacked away for messin’ with the stock. Here we double over laughing at the rooster chasing big brother through the yard, the little slits on his heels, refused a bandaid and infection both. Dirt’s good for ya. Little dirt in the mouth or the blood or covering the cut ain’t gonna hurt you none, boy. What’ll hurt is getting caught in the loft, staying out past the sun, treatin’ them animals like they’ll live a long time. Cousin Mitch taught our donkey to ride like a horse. Can’t remember his name now, but he had one. Ears like a bunny, whispery soft, never once tried to buck anyone off. After the boy trained him, I mean. Had a colt that wouldn’t break and an old nag named Ham. White as snow, except his feet, which looked like he’d kicked up mud whether he had or not. Scooped their shit into the barrel and carted it off. Brushed their hide smoother than mine. Never fed them sugar or carrots but let their funny lips snuff up oats when I kept them back from breakfast. I could be a cowboy, sure.

Straighten up that spine. Wrap the rope round my wrist. Feel a body beg not to break, and break it anyway. So a cowboy isn’t a cowboy to me without the rodeo. I took home ribbons. Could’ve collected buckles. Would’ve worn a belt just to show off. What a life that would’ve been.

Lived so far east I’d never know the Wild West. Just like now. But I'd own those horses, them cows, two new pigs by now. Little piglets with curly tails. Big beasts I couldn’t lift. How long do you think a donkey lives when it’s made to ride beneath grown bodies? Well then, I'd train up a new one. Tip my hat down low. Pick a bit of wheat to chew on for effect. Paint the barn new. Tear the doors off the loft. Empty the stalls. Keep up the fences. Clip the wire. It’s the Wild West of my dreams, I can do what I want to do. Settle down. Box up my buckles. Find a bunny to make mine. Start something new. Look life in the eyes and take it. If the farm never sold. If the trucks never came. If the barn never burned. If the field never went fallow. I tell ya, I’d make my kid pick their own name. Wait til they could talk, ask til they could answer. Leave the card blank, let the state chase itself. And when they got too old for cowboy hats, popguns, pony rides, and piglets, I'd watch them grow. Call them mine. Dig up the remnants of my own wild past.

HIGH NOON GRIN

Damned terrible business, that.

Marshal Quint Quincy always reckoned himself immovable as stone, but when the sheriff returned slung over a saddle, limbs blue as nightshade, much of his solidity was closer to dust.

Quint folded his handkerchief over his mouth, frowning at the corpse of the good sheriff. Flies buzzed about a yawning eye-socket, one ear a mangled black mess, the stench of rot and the end o’ things seeping through his makeshift mask. He feigned peering at his pocket-watch, pressing down his lunch coming up the other way. Wouldn’t do to be seen squirming in front of his men. Quint might have lost his leg in the war, but he wasn’t about to lose his dignity. His gaze drifted back to the defaced corpse.

Terrible, terrible business.

Dark tidings on the wind turned living nightmare. Word that this fiend, this rising fugitive had carved his way to their little scab of the out country, sweeping their town into the bloody affair. Heard tell the outlaw liked to brand his victims with a knife ‘fore sending them to their makers. Two dashes and a crescent carved into the victims’ chests. Earning him the moniker, Smiley.

Unless Quint was much mistook, the bloody rictus sculpted into the sheriff’s sternum sat plain and horrid as day. He shook his head, lips curled in disgust. Naught to smile about here. Fucking filth murderers.

Quint spat into the muddy lane, boot, peg, and cane squelching in the muck as he hobbled toward the deputy who was sent the day prior to fetch the sheriff in Coven. “Where’d you dig up old Pat?”

“Wasn’t no digging, sir,” the spindly, hooked-nose deputy muttered, positively blanched. Like a spirit drifted by and made home in the young man’s flesh. “Found Sheriff by the grave.”

Unholy Tars be good. This new clutch of recruits was green as moss. First corpse for the timid lawman, more’n like. Wouldn’t be the last. But Quint wasn’t cruel. No need to inflict more scars. “Take the body to the coroner. Then take the day, deputy.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Boy!” Quint called out, and a runt of twelve, all dirt, bones, and freckles, came scurrying to stand at attention. “Any word from our detective?”

“No, sir.” The boy’s eyes fluttered to the corpse, then snapped away, and he swallowed hard. “Telegram still broke, sir.”

“What a shit-stain of a morning,” Quint wanted to say. But he settled on, “Keep at it, lad.”

The errand boy remained at rapt attention, eyes big and wet like a puppy, a look that pleaded for more to do. There would be no work here for a boy. The runt scampered off, disappointed.

Terrible business.

Quint had spent the morning at the Marge Saloon awaiting the arrival of their outof-town detective. Four shiners later, the seat reserved for their hotshot sleuth remained notably empty. Hoped their renowned gumshoe hadn’t stumbled the same path as their sheriff.

More’n not the bastard was caught up in other affairs. Wasn’t in Quint’s nature to seek outside help. But when the assignment came from the state general, who was this crippled town marshal to object? All he wanted was some damned order ‘round these parts. Some damned order in his tattered life.

Quint hawked up what remains in his throat and into the mud. Fucking detectives. He limped his way back to the tavern.

“A bear! A bear!” And the saloon erupted into raucous laughter. But the merriment was hacked short as Quint ambled into the parlour, the thump, thump of his wooden peg announcing his presence, sweeping the place with his frown.

“Ah, good marshal!” A woman in a white blouse and black suspenders stepped forward, arms spread wide in a showman’s flourish, smoking pipe in hand. Her shoulder-length hair was parted down the middle, straight as hay and black as coal. Piercing eyes that tickled the back of Quint’s skull and beaked lips that stretched into an impish grin, showing the slightest gap ‘twixt her two front teeth. Her gaze was pinned on him, but never strayed down to his stump, unlike most folks whose eyes were prone to wander. “Heard tell you’d spent the morning waiting on my arrival,” she said. “Apologies for the tardiness!”

Quint furrowed his brows, eyeing her outstretched hand. “Who in the devils are you?”

She pursed her poppy-red lips. “Going by the song o’ these drunk bastards, I should guess…” And she unstuck the card from her forehead depicting a bruin, then grinned bright at the results. “A bear!”

That earned an uproar from the gathered know-littles. Seemed this stranger had won the favour of this sorry bunch what took Quint ten years to earn. But then, lawmen weren’t the warmest stock. And Quint heard tell his personality was akin to a dry summer heat. Respected, certainly. But well-liked might be kissing the horse’s belly.

He continued glaring at the woman, his stump of a leg chafing a storm from the trek, but he remained steadfast, plastering on an old soldier’s glower.

Seeing that Quint wasn’t buying what she was selling, the woman relented. “Detective Tosby.”

Quint snorted. “You’re the gumshoe the state general sent?”

“Guilty as shits!”

He looked her up and down. “I had expected someone with…”

“A long coat? A silly fucking hat?”

“A cock.”

“Ah, but a cunt is what you’ll get. And no less, a pair of ‘em!” A lady in a blue-laced dress drifted up to the detective’s side, her dark skin a stealing contrast to her attire. “Darling, meet Marshal Quincy. Good marshal, my darling assistant, Darling.”

Quint didn’t miss the hungry look the detective snatched from her assistant, and he wondered at the nature of their little arrangement.

The lady offered out her gloved hand with a practiced smile. “A pleasure.”

Quint grunted, taking her hand, while trying to work out a dozen questions fluttering through his skull. Instead, he settled into his bench with a groan. The detective took the seat opposite, one elbow propped on the back of her chair in an easy slouch, smacking at her pipe. Quint let out a mighty sigh. A sigh he’d been holding for days. Years, even.

“Heard tell of your exploits,” Quint said.

“The weekly news bills do paint such fine tales.”

“Except on the obvious count…”

“Sleuthing is a decidedly manly profession, I concede.” She heaved in a breath, then leaned forward as if pawning off gossip. “‘Round these parts, where pricks are in season, it wouldn’t do to promote a scoop featuring…” She made a sour face. “A woman. ”

Quint sniffed. “Don’t much care what you’re carrying down there, so long as you can bring justice. This Smiley…” Quint curled his upper lip. “Seems the fiend’s clawed his way to our turf. Not five miles out. Claimed one o’ our own. Sheriff Pat Podsin.” He shook his head. “Good man.”

“So I’ve witnessed,” Tosby said. “Rode past the good sheriff’s body as he was being brought down from Coven. Brutal sight. That ugly thing carved into his chest.”

Behind her, Darling made a face of disgust.

“Got business in Coven?” Quint asks.

Tosby nodded. “Had to sort cattle with the Bandies.”

“The Bandies?” Quint quirked a brow. “Pray they haven’t marked you in their books.”

“Ah, there lies the oddity.” She drummed her fingers onto the table. “Those conniving brothers are missing. ’Tis the reason for my tardiness.”

Seemed their case just sprouted a pair o’ ugly feathers. “What do you make of it all?”

“Of the absent Bandies and the sheriff’s body? Ain’t much. Of the gossip from my new friends ?” Tosby waved a hand around at the bar, then dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and held up three fingers in a way that somehow managed to look dirty. “Three leads.”

Gods be good, this woman was a piece of work, treating this case as if it were some mystery to be solved in a playbook. Thirteen victims, including the sheriff. Now three drug lords missing. And she spoke of the lives slaughtered as if they were but leavings to be picked. He ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth, gathering a bitter taste. Fucking detectives.

She must have read the disgust on Quint’s face for she turned to wrap her fingers around her assistant’s arm. “Darling, would you be so kind as to fetch our good marshal some refreshments? Looks like he’s had himself a bit of a day.”

“Of course, mistress.” And she drifted off toward the bar, while Tosby snatched another eyeful.

Quint sneered. “Mistress?”

“Treat ‘em right,” she said with a knowing smirk, “and they’ll do more than call you fine names.” She curled her tongue around her pipe, gave it a suck, and pursed out a trail of smoke. “Now, good marshal, it’s best we get a move on once we’ve had a chance to wet our tongues.”

“Where d’you reckon we begin?”

“Why, none other than this very town!”

Quint’s heart dropped into his arse. A murderer in Carim. How had he, the good marshal, been deaf to the dealings on his own people? And when the dust settled, would Quint hold a share of the blame? Reckoned the sooner he got to the bottom o’ this ugly business, the sooner he could rest. Had a duty, hadn‘t he? Had to set things right. It was the least this sorry excuse o’ cripple could muster, what, after having turned tail in the war.

“The day is young,” Tosby said. “And I should like a word with our suspects ‘fore dusk.”

The surgeon Erik Cryptsen was not what you’d call a conventional doctor.

Indeed, he was not what’d you call a conventional man. Competent, but there was a way ‘bout him even Quint couldn’t help but turn his nose at.

“Ah, good marshal!” Cryptsen greeted as Quint hobbled into the man’s quaint home doubling as a space for his practice. A shelf of perfectly aligned leather tomes of medicine on one end. Jars of pickled mammalian foetuses soaked in piss-yellow concoctions on the other.

A painting hung above a writing desk depicting a gallant band of riders galloping off toward a brighter tomorrow. But tomorrow was here, and it was much the dreary same.

Cryptsen himself was an older gentleman, a bald pate ornamented by a tuft of grey at the center like a lone cloud in the sky. He snapped the book shut in his hands, unhooking the reading lenses from his ears then folded them into his neatly pressed vest. The doctor might’ve been collecting the years, more’n even Quint’s fifty-seven, but his hands were steady as stone. And there was something Quint always found odd lurking behind the surgeon’s eyes. Like he knew a little too much, and in light of recent affairs, might be he did.

“What entices you to my humble office?” His crafted smile dropped soon as the rest of Quint’s company stepped into the home.

The sleuth touched a match to the pipe between her teeth, puff, puffing away, then wafted out the flame, not bothering to extend a hand out in greeting. “Detective Tosby.”

If you’d asked Quint his opinion on the supernatural, ghosts and spirits and such drivel, he’d hawk up a great parcel and tell you it was a load o’ horseshit men adopted to make sense of the unknowable. But the way the doctor’s face paled at the mention of her name, might be witchcraft wasn’t far off.

“Heard much o’ your work, Doctor Cryptsen.” Tosby pulled her gloves off with her teeth. “Fine reputation with men and beasts alike.” Quint was again reminded of the doctor’s peculiar collection. Tosby went on, “Steadiest hand in the out country, heard tell.”

Doctor Cryptsen worked his mouth. “To what do I owe the pleasure ”

“Non-sense! The pleasure’s all mine!” She showed her sharp canines. “I wish not occupy much o’ your valuable time as I’m sure you’re” she nosed her way toward his collection of jarred-foetuses “busy in your research.” Then turned into the living room, inviting herself onto the couch anyway, arms splayed onto the back rest in an easy lounge with her legs crossed, faded black boot dangling over one knee. She gestured with her pipe to the vacant chair across. “Please. Won’t be long.”

At a look from the detective, Quint and the woman’s assistant, Darling, joined the reluctant doctor, assuming the other vacant seats around the low coffee bench. There was an uncomfortable pause as Crypsten settled into his chair, rubbing at his weathered face, mouth open as if to speak but falling short on words. Cryptsen’s eyes flickered to the quiet assistant, rested there a moment, then wandered back to the lounging detective. Cornered like a mongrel. Quint would’ve felt sympathy for the man had they met under brighter circumstances. But there was none bright ‘bout the business at hand. He remembered the eerie smile carved into ol’ Pat’s chest, the uneasy look about the eccentric doctor, that time Quint found him whispering to his assortment of pickled pets, and things suddenly took on a decidedly ugly shine.

“So tell me!” Tosby snapped, springing to the edge of her seat in a sit-squat. “I pray your trip back from Coven last week was well?”

Quint angled his gaze toward Tosby. Seemed the gossip she’d curated at the saloon were making quick returns. Quint caught a flash in Cryptsen’s eyes too, something like surprise, before the man tucked it neatly behind his surgeon’s mask.

“Well enough.” Doctor Cryptsen licked at his lips. “Shipment from a pharmacist I had to oversee myself. Thank the Six I made it home before the rains.”

“Like lugging a cart o’ carcasses, no doubt.”

“Never hurts to overstock.” Cryptsen swallowed. “Gods forbid another plague.”

“Curious.”

“Curious?” His voice held the quality of narrowed windpipes.

“That a studied man such as yourself would observe the faiths.”

“No reason medicine and theology cannot co-exist.”

“The Bandies and Blackwoods would beg to differ.”

Quint quirked a brow. Now there was gossip worth a pretty penny. Whatever the detective paid to reap such spoils, it was paid at premium. The Bandies and Blackwoods may appear long-standing partners of business on the surface, but the vie for the opioid throne predated even the founding of Carim. Co-existing was in neither party’s playbooks.

“Not my place to say, I’m afraid,” Cryptsen said.

“How ‘bout a corpse and an alibi?” Tosby asked.

There was a pregnant stillness. Quint eyed the doctor, looking like he might burst open and spill forth whatever secrets he had shored up, but was wise to hold his tongue.

Quint offered, “The detective and I are here on the orders of the state general. Bandies and Blackwoods aside, we’re looking for one they call Smiley.

Claimed one o’ our own in Sheriff Podsin, just outside Carim ”

“The Sheriff?” Doctor Cryptsen said, a slight quaver in his tone. “Sheriff Podsin, he is…?”

“Dead as shits,” Tosby said. “And discovered at the very graves you frequent.”

Colour leeched from the doctor’s complexion. “What are you implying, detective?”

“Naught. Just that you may or may not have crossed paths with our fiend. Though it looks like your expedition might have missed the mark by a day or two.”

Crypsten seemed caught between relief and remorse, whether at the discovery of the late sheriff’s current state or the account that divorced him from the bloody affair, Quint couldn’t say. One thing’s for certain, it didn’t take no famed sleuth to see the man was hiding something.

“My sincere condolences, marshal,” Cryptsen said to Quint. Empty words, and not an ounce of sincerity to be found. The doctor turned back to Tosby. “But as you’ve noted yourself, detective, it’s been a week since my return and my work has prevented me from doing naught else. Much as I’d love to contribute to your discovery of this wretched outlaw, I’m afraid I’m void of any knowledge on that front.” Tosby clicked her tongue. “Damned shame.”

“Were it I could do more.”

Quint wasn’t convinced. But the burden o’ proof rested on their shoulders. Accounts that didn’t stand beyond reasonable doubt was no evidence at all.

Nothing to go by but accounts. And tepid ones at that. Seemed the detective racked up the same sum.

“Well, I shouldn’t keep you.” Tosby stood from the chaise, tugging at her suspenders. “Thought I’d merely swing by to do a detective’s due diligence.” She wrinkled her lip, then beamed a wide, gap-toothed grin. “Now there’s a bit of a tongue-tangler, eh?”

“Of course…” Cryptsen said, still seemingly shaken by the bit of news as concerns the sheriff. “Any other way I could be of service, you need merely ask.”

“Save me the trouble to simply confess.” She levelled him a look.

This time, Doctor Cryptsen had the good sense to mirror her smile. “Too often do I wish for whatever ailing my patients to spring forth and reveal itself. Alas, were it that simple, I should think both our professions would be rendered redundant.”

“No doubt.” Tosby snickered. “Fucking outlaws, like the fucking plague, am I wrong?”

“I wish you all the best.” Cryptsen eased the door open with a grin, a gesture to parry her blow. “And may the Six guide you in your search.”

The door shut behind them, and they were back in the windless muck of the old town road.

“Don’t much like the scent o’ that one,” Quint said, his skin prickling at Cryptsen’s parting demeanour.

“You let me worry ‘bout the sniffing, marshal.” A flinty resolve in her eyes, pupils dark as pitch. “My mama blessed me with a keen nose and I mean to snuff out every crooked bastard holed up in this town. Ain’t that right, sweetling?”

“The keenest, mistress,” Darling said.

Quint eyed the assistant, trying work out her measure. A quiet one. But no doubt, she sponged up more’n she let on. Always the quiet ones you had to watch for.

“Who’s the next hapless bastard on our list?” Quint asked.

“I’ve a mind to pay Mon Blackwood a little visit at his House of Wonders.”

The mention near stopped him dead in his tracks. Quint hawked up what he thought of the prospect and sent it spinning into the mud. “Fucking hells…”

“Surely a little prodding ain’t hurt no one.”

“You’d be surprised.” Quint shifted uncomfortably on his peg, staring down their one- road leavings of a town at the House of Wonders. A swift end to those who found their paths crossed with the Blackwoods.

“Marshal, if there’s one thing you should learn about me,” she said, glare bright with guile, “it’s that I love me a good surprise.”

Yap, yap! barked the tiny rat-dog in the arms of the lounging pimp, making Quint unreasonably irritated. Irritated and wanting to let loose his bowels. Didn’t help there were a dozen thugs surrounding ‘em, armed to the loins. Yap, yap!

“Shoosh,” cooed the gravelly voice of the man in a three-piece suit sat in front of them, running his ring-crusted fingers through the fur of the demon on his lap, speech slurred and motions slow as molasses. For one who ran the House of Wonders with an iron-grip, Mon Blackwood never seemed in a rush anywhere. His drooped eyes crawled back to find Quint and his party. “So you say, marshal…” Another pause as the man sucked at his thin lady’s pipe, weathered cheeks hollowing before he gave a slow purse out. “That you have reason to believe,” he made a face as if whiffing a glass of wine, eyes narrowing in ecstasy but never shutting completely “this fugitive by the name of Sweety ”

“Smiley,” Quint supplied.

“ is seeking refuge in my town?”

Quint didn’t miss his claim over Carim, and scanning the rough lot about ‘em, brutes and blowhards of like-stock flashing their scowls, pistols loud at their hips, he figured this was no hour to pick at the details. Quint felt parched of a sudden. He was no slouch-shot, but that didn’t mean he had much appetite prodding at a pack of slavering wolves. There was a reason they avoided Mon’s paradise like the pox.

“Indeed!” piped Tosby, enthused as a child wandered into a sweet shop, not in the least fazed by the circling hounds. “And I’ve every reason to believe the devil might be sitting among us.”

Mon lazily sucked at his thin pipe, smoke curling up to the balcony where a gaggle of preening whores watched on. “A bold claim.”

“I’d given ear to a lot of claims o’er the years,” Tosby said. “Came to the sum frail ones ain’t worth weighing.”

“Consider me endowed with curiosity.”

“Know anything ‘bout a dead sheriff on the road to Coven?”

The pimped lifted his brows, but his eyes remained two droopy slits. “Forward. I admire that in a woman.”

“Rich. I admire that in a man.”

“None richer in a hundred mile.”

“If only my momma had popped me out a pair o’ decades sooner, reckon I’d trip right into your arms. But then my daddy was never too keen on my tastes in older men, however cunning and affluent.”

“Careful, young lady. I am susceptible to flattery.”

“Confess, and I’ll fill your ears with more than sweet words.”

Mon croaked out a genuine laugh. A crooked sound. Quint didn’t think the kingpin had it in him, but then, it seemed Tosby had a way ‘bout folk. Wouldn’t surprise him if the woman could coax frost from a burning wick.

“I’ll only confess we haven’t met sooner,” Mon said. “I’d show you the way of my world. No doubt, you’d be sitting here next to me rather’n across. And in something less…” He wrinkled his nose. “Encumbered.”

Quint thought he caught a hint of a sneer under the detective’s easy smile.

“The offer is generous,” Tosby said, eyeing the pricey spectators gathered about the balcony rails, “but I wouldn’t presume to upset the order o’ things. Seems you’ve netted yourself a fine collection o’ doves.”

“More’s the pity. My generosity’s no charity.”

“Then I’ll settle for an admission.”

There was that gravelly cackle again, but with a great deal more teeth, and a great deal less mirth. “You know I’ve had men’s tongues for less, lawman or no.”

“Might be the only instance where it pays to be born without a cock then.”

“You’ll find my tastes are unbiased when it comes to carving out tongues.”

A silence that teetered on a pistol’s trigger. Quint was never much o’ a talker. Likened himself to a straight-shot. The highs and lows of an exchange gave him quite the head pain. Even so, he could recognise their prattle had taken a downturn off a cliff and into a gorge. The lingering whores had vanished into their quarters, along with his hopes.

Quint noted the men surrounding them with fingers itching over their holsters, and he couldn’t help but shift his own hand onto his lap where his pistol was within reach. Should’ve known better’n to kick up the hornet’s nest. Should’ve left Mon Blackwood and his merry band of cunts to their devices. He noted the detective’s assistant, Darling, sitting straight-backed as an arrow like there wasn’t a storm brewing before her, while Tosby and Mon rubbed lightning with their glares, Quint caught in the middle. Was this how he went down? Figured he was on borrowed time, ever since the war failed to take him. Damned unlucky fate, that. But that was setting things right for you.

“Damon, dear!” drifted a voice from the balcony. A woman with short-cropped hair in a cream-coloured dress descended the steps. The Countess Lorna Blackwood. Not a real countess, mind. But a city’s failed facade sits differently out in the dusty roughs. “Why ever have you not informed me of guests?”

Quint let out a breath. A welcome interruption, by his reckoning. Seemed whatever bloody fate awaited them would be temporarily sidelined.

The pimp angled his lazy head sideways. “The light of my world. A tonic to my tired eyes!” He held out a hand, to which Lorna gracefully placed hers, and Mon kissed it. Such decorum. But make no mistake, behind the blossom hid a viper. Mon might be the face of the thriving House of Wonders, but Lorna was the backbone. A lady as cunning as she was ruthless. The Savage Siblings.

“Marshal, what a great pleasure!” The countess-in-name flashed Quint her most winning smile. Quint made to get up, despite his leg, but she waved him down. “Please, no need, I am but an intruder in this table talk. I hope you’ve been well.” And her gaze slid to his pegged leg.

Quint worked up a grunt from the depths, not much appetite for sympathy following a hearty meal of hostility. And ‘specially not from the likes of Lorna Blackwood. “Well enough.”

Lorna turned to acknowledge the other scorpion in the room. “And pardoning my ignorance, you must be…”

“Detective Tosby.” The sleuth tipped her head and touched two fingers to her brow. “Your brother and I were just massaging the delicate matters of murder.”

“A detective!” Lorna gasped, gingerly placing a hand over her chest.

“My, I pray he hasn’t incriminated himself. What a cruel fate it’d be to leave behind this circus to be handled alone by his loving sister.”

“I would never leave you, my beautiful.” And Mon gave her hand another smooch, his sluggish eyes glued to her like honey. It was all Quint could do to contain his disgust.

Lorna’s gaze drifted over to Tosby’s assistant, Darling, curiously lingering there for a few breaths before the detective cut in, “Lady Blackwood, it seems you’ve an eye for gold. But you’ll have to pry Darling from my dead arms before she finds a place amongst your doves.”

“A tempting prospect, detective. Is that an invitation?”

“For a woman of your stature, I’m sure none is needed. Though our wagon has swerved entirely from its path. What were we talking about?”

“Murder,” supplied Mon.

“Ah, yes, and a none merrier topic!” Tosby ran her tongue over the gap in her front teeth, then fixed Lorna Blackwood with a look bursting with accusation. “Countess ”

“Please, just Lorna.”

“Miss Lorna,” she said, her smile never waning. “I understand there’s been a scuffle with the Bandies in Coven.” And there it was. Prodding at the nagging thorn in their sides. But a damning statement could mean one less thorn in Quint’s. Just had to play their cards right.

“Seems you’ve a keen nose for gossip,” Lorna said.

“A good quality to possess in my line of work, I reckon,” Tosby said.

“Why, I’m surprised there are any outlaws left with someone of your talents sniffing about. What qualities must a criminal possess to shrug off her scent, I wonder?”

“A bath, maybe.” Tosby pursed her lips. “And dare I say, a smile.”

The remark might well have been a firm slap to the face. Packed the same bite. The silence loitered like a stillborn, while Tosby puffed away at her pipe, sprawled in the same easy lounge as if they weren’t at present brushing death’s lips. Quint watched on, sweat tickling his scalp, eyeing Lorna’s gang of thugs eager to pull iron. What was that ‘bout playing their cards right?

At a look from Lorna, her men eased off, then she trained her smile back at Tosby. “Pardons. Returning to our discourse.”

“The brothers Bandie missing. And a dead sheriff to boot. Privy to anything o’ the sort?”

“Pray, what has you floating such questions through our house?”

“On the count of your history with the triplets, and the rictus carved into a toocurious sheriff’s corpse.”

“Sad business.” She shrugged up her shoulders. “On any other matters as relates to the trio, I’d be obliged to assist. The Blackwoods and the Bandies have long been business partners.” She feigned a sigh. “But on this terrible occasion, I’m afraid I couldn’t say.”

“Couldn’t or won’t?” Quint chimed in.

The countess merely smiled. Nothing strong enough toward an admission. But a great stink beneath the mask.

Tosby considered the woman a long moment. Then she huffed out a breath and leaned forward to talk over the low table between them. “I see you’re a capable woman, Lorna. Name me a lady in a hundred mile who could tame a herd fine as this bunch.” She gestured at the grizzled men around ‘em. “Be a mighty shame if your empire crumbled sheltering the likes of a singular, blood-starved outlaw. The business with the Bandie Boys in Coven might be hush-hush for the hour, but reckon you’ll sooner find every pair o’ lawman eyes nailed to you. Might not find the swim so brisk then. And I can’t say what will become of the House of Wonders. Never mind profits, there mightn’t be much in way o’ a roof once the state gets their hands on this place. So how’s ‘bout we keep ahead o’ the storm then? Say we nip this in the bud ‘fore things get gusty. Take my meaning?”

Lorna chewed over the detective’s words, jaw set like she didn’t much like the taste of what was offered, but saw that the alternative was no better. All it took was to toss profits into the equation, and suddenly the slant of the tables seemed rather negotiable. No faster way to cut to the heart o’ matters than to call to doubt the health of one’s lifework.

“What’re you asking?” Lorna said.

Tosby treated the woman to one of her grins. Seemed she had Lorna where she wanted her. “I’m no one to toss a sister under a wagon. Know a bit of what it’s like to walk those shoes. And seeing what you’ve built, can’t help but feel … inspired.” She considered the woman, considered the room.

“But one must know when to trim the fodder. Let’s start with a name. Perhaps even one that looks the type. I’ll let you sort out the cattle.”

Quint shot Tosby a glare. Had the detective just submitted for a cover-up? Surely, he’d misheard. But Quint was wiser than to insert his ferment, what, with tempers soothed. Might be there was more to the painting. The look the countess returned gave Quint scant comfort.

“Something to consider,” Lorna said, the lean o’ her saying she’d do more than merely consider the offer.

“That’s all I ask,” said Tosby. “I should warn, Miss Lorna. The sun soon dips. And the state grows restless. Swifter the better.”

“I’m not one to dally.”

“Course not.” Tosby made to get up. “The Savage Siblings. A pleasure.”

“Why are we here?” Quint asked, growing restless, rattled. He was no easy man to shake, but felt like he’d lost grip to the reins somewhere along the way. Might be he never had ‘em.

“To tie up loose ends,” Tosby said, “ain’t that why, marshal? Ain’t it always why?”

Quint turned and spat, shifted where he was half-sprawled, a mighty pain in his loins. Stump chaffing from the ride. Nerves chaffing from the uncertainty.

They were huddled by a patchy hillside, and Quint could scarcely pick out the detective’s face by the dim glow of dusk. The sun had dipped below the horizon, sky darkening and the shadows growing long. The grinding of crickets beat from the brushes, and the dead silence of the grave lurked beyond the hill’s crest. They had ridden out of Carim to the very site where the sheriff’s body was discovered, waiting for gods knew what. His judgment, maybe.

Darling was tending to the horses not far off. Never far, that one. Quiet as a mouse and not more than a handful of words spoken since they had met that morning. Quint thought this fieldwork was no place for a lady, but then he was reminded who was squat in front o’ him, and he quietly swallowed his thoughts.

“Damned terrible business,” he muttered.

“Reckon quiet business ain’t business worth pursuing.”

“We waiting on the dead to rise?”

Tosby snickered. “I should hope not, though the living should be joining us presently.”

There was a faint rattling in the distance that almost booted Quint’s spirit from his flesh. He peeped over the hill’s brow, keeping a low profile, not that any damned soul could pick ‘em out by this light. An orange glow bobbed into view, a coach clattering down the rutted path toward the graves. “Speak of the kind,” Tosby muttered beside him. “That’s the thing ‘bout the living. They could yet surprise you.”

The carriage squealed to a halt in a clearing among the jutting headstones of the graveyard, dark branches of the drooping trees dangling like claws, reaching, grasping at any who’d the numb sense of wandering the grounds at this hour.

The lantern light revealed the familiar face of the driver. Doctor Cryptsen.

“Son o’ a bastard,” Quint breathed. “That him? That our fiend?”

The doctor disembarked, made his way to the cabin, then eased the carriage door open with a click, and out stepped the Savage Siblings, Mon and Lorna Blackwood.

Quint curled his lip, unable to make stalk from stem. “Hell’s this?”

He nearly cursed aloud when a third person crawled out from the back. Left him stunned, speechless.

“Why, if I ain’t mistook,” Tosby said, “that’d be the dear deputy who’d fetched the deceased sheriff.”

The spindly, hooked-nose lawman, Deputy Polman, as Quint knew him, looked just as he remembered that morning. Green and jittery and pale, even by the warm glow of the lantern, and not a shred of murderer in him. If bets had opened on who’d end up on the wrong side o’ this affair, Quint would’ve put his coin on the young deputy. But then, the day had revealed Quint wasn’t the best judge of character, and it didn’t seem things were shaping up to dispute that score. Made him wonder how much had gone under his nose, unnoticed.

An inaudible burble, followed by an animate Doctor Cryptsen tossing up his arms to some accusatory remark thrown by the siblings. Then he stalked toward the wagon, produced a shovel, and picked out a gravestone.

Deputy Polman looked to be making himself small like he was willing himself out of existence, but not ‘fore he was swept up in the currents of their lively discourse. Certainly wasn’t remarking on the weather, Quint could hazard as much. He wondered who the real figure of authority was in their little party. And it brought on a wave of shame that this was the quality of men he’d cultivated under him.

“The hell’s all this caterwauling?” said Quint, threads prickling at his collar.

“If you’ve been paying attention, good marshal,” Tosby said, “and for your sake I hope you have, what d’you reckon our suspects have in common?”

“That they’re all cunts?” he wanted to say. But he settled on, “None to my eye. None that makes sense o’ this bloody business.”

“None yet.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t spoil the harvest.” She gave her pipe a final smack. “Shall we? I believe the strings are getting rather taut between our highly-strung friends.”

Two sharp whistles as the detective stood at the hill’s crest waving down at the gathering.

“I come unarmed!” announced Tosby as she shuffled her way down with raised hands. “Here with me is the marshal!”

Didn’t even give him a chance to protest. Not that he’d have much say. Quint pushed himself up with a grunt, almost tumbled headfirst down the short hill if not for his prodding cane, heart catching in his throat.

He made his awkward way down the patchy hillside, grasping for a firm foothold with each step, not even minding their suspects. Just took care not to eat shit. Damned ugly business.

Their intrepid little party was not so welcoming, a pair of nasty revolvers trained at them while Quint and Tosby carefully weaved between the headstones, stepping into the circle of light. Mon and Lorna Blackwood were stood behind the armed doctor and the armed deputy, eyes hard, suspicious, baleful. Deputy Polman looked right blanched at the sight of Quint. Like a remorseful lad caught with pockets full of sweets outside a candy shop.

“Marshal?” Polman said, grip wavering on his pistol.

“Lower your weapon, deputy,” cautioned Quint, mustering a calm but commanding tone. A marshal’s voice masking his dastard nerves. Hid well his firmly puckered arse.

The timid lawman began lowering his weapon, but Lorna stepped forward and snatched the revolver from the deputy’s hand, and suddenly the sights of the barrel didn’t look so limp. A practiced grip, that.

“How do, Miss Lorna,” Tosby said, casual as a passerby exchanging gossip on a fair day.

“Reckon I caught myself a too-curious pair of rats, that’s how do,” Lorna said. “Know what become of rodents in Carim, detective?”

Tosby treated each to one of her looks, smiling like she was the one holding a pistol and not the other way ‘round, then glanced at the grave not far off where the doctor had started work before their untimely disturbance.

“I reckon you shoot ‘em and bury ‘em outback.”

“Lord Blackwood,” Doctor Cryptsen said, revolver levelled at Tosby, gold lens and sweat glistening on his bald pate. Eyes fever-bright. A terrible combination to be faced with. A skeptic with a gun. “The pair knows too much. I urge we bury them with the rest.”

The pimp with his drooped eyes simply shrugged and slurred, “You answer to my love.”

“You will do nothing of the sort until my say so, doctor,” Lorna said. “Just my fucking luck. A yellowbelly lawman. And a wary surgeon. Must I do everything?” She snapped her attention back to Tosby. “What do you know?”

Quint noted the sleuth with her easy smile. How could anyone smile at a time like this? Fucking detectives.

“What do I know?” Tosby said. “Daresay that’d depend on the scope o’ the question.”

“Don’t play smart with me bitch!” she snarled hard, making Quint flinch. “I’ve no qualms putting a bullet in that pretty fucking head of yours!”

“No doubt, no doubt,” Tosby conceded with a half-chortle. “Suppose power goes to the one with the loaded barrel.” She licked at her lips, then tipped her head toward the gravestone. The one the doctor had started unearthing. “I know you’ve found a new home for the Bandie Boys, courtesy of our good doctor here.” She gave Cryptsen a nod, then turned to regard the deputy, pale in his boots. “And I know this one been in your pocket a while, but couldn’t find it in him to bury the departed Sheriff Podsin. A pity. The good sheriff who knew too much.”

“This true, deputy?” Quint spoke up, couldn’t help himself. Had to know. The deputy in his silence, unable to meet Quint’s eyes, was all the answer he needed. Gods be good, what had the world come to?

“All it took was a few lines of inquiry,” Tosby said, “and the doubt sets in. Had I buried the Bandies deep enough? Had the doctor done his job? Had the sheriff uncovered some bones? Save you the work. The Bandies are well under, the doctor was practiced in his task, and the ill- fated sheriff sniffed too close to the mark.”

Lorna let out a brash, overdone chuckle. “Seems you have it all figured out.”

“Ah, though, the big question still remains. Who is the hand behind this whole business? Who wears the smile?”

Quint studied the bunch. This carnage couldn’t have been wreaked by one person alone. Might be it was all of them. But the sum didn’t add up. What of the dozen other corpses littered ‘cross the out country? What reason did this eclectic bag of cunts possess to leave such a trail?

Lorna sighed. “Might be the mistake was ours. Thinking to mark the sheriff’s body to throw off our scent, not knowing it’d attract meddlesome rats. You really do possess a keen nose, detective. All’s the pity.” She cocked the revolver. “Seems I’ll be adding a pair to the fiend’s list.” Left them no time to ponder her words.

Two cracks pierced his eardrums. A pitched ringing. Took him straight back to the war. Cold, cold shock. Wailing from somewhere. Quint stood rooted with his arms raised, trembling. A tingle in his stump, but otherwise unharmed.

The doctor was sprawled facedown in the dirt, the back of his head an ugly mess, bits of matter splattered about, black blood pouring down the sides, soaking the soil. A figure in a suit was bent over another body not far off, wailing, wailing. Mon, Quint realised. His sister under him, blood spurting between fingers pressed to the gaping wound in her throat, convulsing. Good as dead.

Next to Quint, the detective held a smoking pistol. Quint looked down at his empty holster. His pistol, he noticed. A damned quick draw. Damned impossible shots. Emerging from the darkness behind the carriage, out stepped Darling with a trained rifle. Second shot made possible.

Tosby walked up to the slobbering pimp.

Mon looked up, drooped eyes red. “You will pay! You will ”

Another crack. A splatter of blood. And Mon fell dead. Happened so sudden, it left Quint dazed. Still trying to grasp the scene. Couldn’t even form a thought.

“Deftly executed, mistress,” Darling said.

Quint somehow managed to find his voice. “What have you done?”

The look the pair gave him was far from friendly.

“What needed doing.” Tosby grinned, spots of blood dotting her face, sharp teeth gleaming. She lowered her revolver, fished out her pipe, then patted her pockets. “Ah fuck! Anyone got a light?” She peered around, spotted the quivering deputy huddled by a gravestone looking like he might throw up.

The young man came to as if emerging from a fog.

“A light, deputy?” Tosby asked, standing over him.

The lawman absently shook his head.

“Pity.” She shrugged, then put a bullet through the man’s skull.

Quint stared in horror, the crack of the shot echoing off into the uncaring night. Amidst it all, he felt a twinge of irritation. Anger that his damned leg was aching. What a time to be fussing over his fucking stump. He was beginning to think he might’ve had everything wrong.

“Who are you?” Quint croaked.

She glanced about the bloody mess. “I’m sure you can deduce it.”

At that moment, Darling produced a large butcher knife, crouched over the dead countess, and started ripping open the front of the woman’s dress, at it with the same passionless vim as herding cattle. Flesh parted as blade met skin.

“Oh…” Quint said, dumbly. Could hardly believe it was his own voice. “And Tosby?”

A disappointed click of the woman’s tongue. “Your famed detective died much the same as any other man. Squealing and shitting his britches while I carved his fucking flesh in!” She snarled the last words in a spray of spit, making Quint flinch. Courage was a flimsy thing stood at the end o’ a barrel. Quint swallowed, wishing for a drink. Wasn’t likely to find one now.

“Why?” was all he could ask.

“Don’t much care for cheap mimics. Reckon the Bandies and Blackwoods had their fun. High time for a change o’ scenery.”

A silence. Then he grunted like he understood. But what was there to understand?

“Now lucky for you,” said Tosby or rather, Smiley. “I won’t be doing the carving. That’d be Darling’s line of expertise.” She caressed the other woman’s hand as she finished off her bloody sketch. “Know what they call her back at Yodmouth?” She kissed Darling’s fingers. “The Sculptor. Figures one who cuts up cattle to the liking of Monsieur Fulcrum knows a thing or two ‘bout scoring flesh.”

Quint’s breath was coming in heavy now, sweat tickling his scalp. A way out. Had to find one. “Peace?” he pleaded. A pathetic attempt. Wheedle, wheedle. This was where setting things right landed him.

“’Fraid not.” The fiend walked up to Quint, chasing the soul from his body, then pressed the barrel to his forehead, and she shoved him backwards, peg and leg buckling under him, hit the dirt hard, a bright pain in his mouth, the taste of iron on his throbbing tongue. Numbness spread down his arms. Wrists bent at the wrong angles. Quint prised his tear-blurred eyes open.

Smiley unbuttoned her stiff collar. Two dashes and a crescent scabbed below her collarbone. An eerie rictus.

“Word is I’m the devil,” she said, hatred bright in her dark, dark eyes. “But I liken myself to the divine. One good glimpse ‘fore you pigs go back to the dirt. Ain’t that right, sweetling?”

The dark-skinned woman stepped over Quint. “Always, mistress.”

A flash of a knife. A gleam of a smile. Terrible business.

Quint screamed.

A COWBOY LIKE ME

one day our love will be eaten by the red rock mountain. but tonight, the stars fill the sky to the brim, just like the fire we are privy to live, to die by, and when the sun wakes up to lay her head on the horizon’s shoulder she’ll find us a mirror of her and her lover.

EXCERPT FROM UTOPIA

Summary: In 1856, a male gunslinger (“Bold Bullet”) escapes to the Queer Frontier. Joined by his best friend, a questioning lesbian doctor disguised as a man, Dr. Gray; his assassin who he has befriended; and a runaway boy pulp fiction writer, Christian Joseph, the four mismatched colleagues search for a fabled alternative town called “Utopia.”

CHAPTER NINE

After being separated from Bold Bullet and his assassin friend, Dr. Gray and Christian Joseph attend their first town meeting in Utopia

The town meeting the next evening was held at the Bear Rocks Silver Mine in an underground cavern with secure solid walls and a thick stone roof. Babe drove the doctor, Garrison, and Christian in her wagon down the dirt road the five miles from town to the mines.

“They can’t do anything to anyone in the cavern,” Babe said. “They can’t burn it down or shoot through it. We post a few guards along the rocks to watch out for the Wunderfahrt boys.”

Garrison wore canvas pants and a factory-made gray wool shirt. He sat sulkily next to Christian Joseph in the back of the wagon as it rumbled along.

Doctor Gray remained dressed as a man in her freshly laundered shirt, jacket, and breeches. After so long the clothes felt right. She realized dressing as a woman would be the awkward action to take. Without the damned beard, she liked how the clothes felt on her. She realized her phony man’s voice and posture were the things she could let go of. But what would take their place, she wondered?

She hadn’t known about Utopia being threatened. The stories told in New York didn’t mention the Wunderfahrts and their men. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of naming the place, “Utopia.” she thought. The town was supposed to be free of the hatred that exists everywhere else.

Horses and wagons stood tied to posts along the mine entrance. Several small gas lanterns sent flickering squares of light over the hard packed soil of the quarry.

The air smelled of dry dust.

The thrill of the new rekindled inside of Christian Joseph. An actual cave! Two men greeted them outside, both large and both with hairy forearms and hair poking out where their collars were open. “Welcome to the Bear Rock Mines.” One tipped an imaginary hat to Christian Joseph.

“We call them the Hairy Bears,” Babe said.

Inside, the cavern was like nothing Christian had ever seen. Rugs lined the floor. Apparently, the bears used this front cavern as an office space, rather than build structures of wood outside. Neatly stacked papers sat on several desks. Gas lamps hung on rock walls with dark soot stains spattered above their flames. Shadows danced on the ceiling. Several tunnels led from the cavern into dark passageways.

“The main entrance where they have their rails and dirty machinery is on the other side of this hill,” Babe explained.

The cavern dwarfed the visitors. Perhaps twenty folding canvas stools faced a wall with a small oil painting of James “Grizzly” McBay. There were large loose boulders in the back. Approximately thirty townspeople talked in low echoing voices.

Several small children ran about laughing and playing “tag.” Two collie dogs chased them and jumped as they played. Some of the women wore long skirts and bonnets, but most wore pants and boots. The bears wore dirty smocks and trousers no doubt the result of a hard day’s work underground. The other men present were of varying ages. Some were from The Screaming Lilly Saloon.

After some time, a man with a full beard stood before the painting and motioned for everyone to sit on stools and boulders and for the meeting to begin.

“Hello, I’m Gorgeous Fenster,” the man said. “I run this mine. As you know our sheriff ran off after the doctor was killed. In addition, many of us have been offered large sums of money for our ranches. I, myself, have been offered five thousand dollars for this mining operation. I declined.”

There was a murmur from the audience.

“We have lost some of our residents due to intimidation by the Wunderfahrt gang,” Fenster went on, “But tonight we have a new neighbor to welcome. We have at last, a new doctor: Dr. Troy Gray.”

Unanimous applause echoed in the cave. Heads turned and Dr. Gray felt compelled to stand and nod her head once in recognition of the attention. But it was more than that. She wasn’t alone in a sea of white faces. Instead, there were people of all kinds of backgrounds.

“All the way from New York City!” Gorgeous Fenster added. More applause and cheering followed. Several people stood up and headed to where the doctor remained seated in the back.

“Now, leave that doctor alone until after the meeting.”

A man wearing nothing but a sheet draped around his waist stood up. “I’m Josh Breeze and as everyone knows I run the nude dentistry office on Flume Street. We’ve already lost most of the Water Mill women. They took the money the Wunderfahrts offered and they went to Montana. I will not sell out. This is Utopia! If someone offers me a small fortune, all for the good, except where will I run naked and free, painting oils of male prostitutes? Boston? No! We must keep this valley. We must fight the Wunderfahrts!”

Josh Breeze continued prompted by substantial cheering and applause. “Those Wunderfahrt roughnecks hang round down by the mill and catcall me every morning. “Look, it’s a giant shrimp walking around! A giant pink shrimp! And they whistle and say, hey baby! And, do a dance! and all manner of sayings!”

“Well, if you didn’t run around nude maybe they’d leave you alone! Hello, everyone. I’m Virginia Soakes.” A wiry woman stood near the boulders in the back. She had been seated quite close to Dr. Gray and Christian Joseph. “I run the pawn shop and I’m pretty sure I’ve met every last one of you already. Josh, I was the one who lent you the salve to put on that rash you contracted from the spring foliage, remember? We’ve been friends ever since. We read the Torah together nude, for Godsakes! I didn’t move here to be part of a war. I moved here to finally get some peace. To finally be left alone!”

“Josh isn’t provoking those Wunderfahrts,” Babe stood up an arm’s length from Virginia. “Hello, everyone, Babe Winters here. Virginia and me was one of the first women ever to move to Utopia back in ’51. We split up because of her need to be alone and because she eats with her mouth open which I just can’t stand. We are all being provoked. Those Wunderfahrt boys let two wild pigs and a ferret loose in your pawn shop last month, Virginia. Have you forgotten? And what about the threats they make to burn down the Screaming Lilly and burn all of our houses? That’s what this meeting is about. Those Wunderfahrts are organized. That’s what we’ve got to do. Organize!”

“Hold on, Babe,” A man wearing a wool tunic and sandals stood up. “You all know me,” he addressed the group. “I’m Genius Ward. I grow opium for Babe’s medicine shop. I love Utopia just like the rest of you do, but if we fight and if we organize many of us will be killed along with our children. I’ve seen enough sorrow and so have you.”

“What will you do, then?” Babe shot back. “You live with a white man. If the Wunderfahrts give you money to leave where will you two men go and live without fear? We all know there have been other communities like Utopia that have tried to survive and were destroyed.”

“What we need,” Gorgeous Fenster took back control of the meeting. “Is law enforcement.”

“The Wunderfahrts will crush them,” Josh said. “They killed the doctor. They killed the mayor –“

“Killed himself,” Gorgeous Fenster said. “…was the official story. We have no mayor. And the Wunderfahrts will rig any election. We can’t call territorial government for help because our ‘commune’ as they call us, is considered an aberration in the site of –“

“God. Yes, we all know that,” Babe interrupted.

“They cain’t invade us because we have the most popular brothel in the whole west.”

Poor Montgomery stood up. He was willowy, handsome, and dressed like a ranch hand. “I agree with Babe and Josh. We must organize. And what you people forgets is we have an advantage. Some of those Wunderfahrts are regulars at the Screaming Lilly.

The reason they hate us is because we got what they want. Real freedom. They skulk around and chase us behind closed doors but they don’t got the guts to admit we have what they want: Freedom, whether they are like us or not. Real freedom like what this whole country is supposed to be about.”

The room erupted in applause all at once. Surprise lit Poor Montgomery’s face.

“We won’t sell our mine,” Gorgeous Fenster spoke when the cheering had subsided. “We dug this mine. We have children that we are raising here.”

“Whores and miners aren’t enough,” Babe said. “If more of the rest of us take the money and leave like the Water Mill Women, we’ll still lose Utopia.”

“And if we stay,” Gorgeous Fenster said. “We risk our lives at the hands of those murderers.”

“Like the sheriff. They’ll kill us all or burn down our houses.”

Dr. Gray hung her head low. After months of saving money and planning and then risking life and limb traveling through the wilderness, it seemed everything had been in vain.

Christian Joseph observed her. If only Bold Bullet were here. He vowed he would ask everyone if they knew where Bold Bullet was or had they heard of where he might be. He would find his hero.

DEATH OF THE OLD WEST

Zeke was a tough nut, a real working man who took no shit and gave as good as he got. He was also a cowboy who lived in the Old West and he was a bit different from the others; he never carried a gun that worked. A hundred and two confirmed kills in ‘Nam had changed his mind. Followed by a dozen scalps in the Gulf. It wasn’t in his operating procedure anymore; he was able to handle himself well enough with his fists and had never lost a scrap yet. There was a reason that Zeke was like this; he was totally fucking crazy. Cataclysmic events led him to the Old West.

After the nuclear was that devastated America and the whole world in 2012, Zeke left his devastated city where he worked. With no city to work at, he was out of a job. Before the nuclear fallout fell, he hurriedly packed his ex army holdall with supplies and left his small one bedroom apartment near LA.

High tailing it up to the hills was his best option; he decided this while camping under a tree situated upon a hill that looked down onto the burning city. Having walked a dozen miles through the night and luckily not meeting anyone, he was whacked out. The last thing he wanted to do was walk in daylight, running the risk of meeting armed desperate people. With a litre bottle of Tequila, Zeke was fine under his tree. Down below his city burned in a radioactive firestorm, where millions had died. He knew why the war erupted, for he was an ex warrior from an even older war. This new war didn’t bother him; he knew it was coming for over twenty years.

For now he was safe, he estimated the winds were blowing east. This would take any fallout away from him and out to sea, from the bombs that hit LA. Could be in trouble from fallout from any hit cities east of me though, he thought, taking a long pull of Tequila. Adjusting his holdall he used as a pillow, he squirmed and got comfy, pulling his green army blanket over him as camouflage. It had been over a decade since he was drafted for a second time, into the US Army to fight in the third Persian Gulf War, he kept every bit of his military kit except his gun.

He vowed never to kill again; his past actions in his wars would no doubt send him to hell and back.

When daylight faded into twilight, he upped his butt and headed further into the interior, away from the ruined city and any surviving people. Slowly travelling by night was better and safer. For two weeks he ventured forth, always by night. Unarmed and ready for the unexpected. He used stealth and his intelligence, thankful for this bit of military training on Search and Destroy missions. His instructors had always urged, “Look with your eyes before rushing in.”

This approach saved Zeke’s life when he came across a sleeping biker gang camping out down by the river. Seeing their smoldering camp fire and hearing their snores alerted Zeke to their presence. Do I steal one of their Harley’s and make a run for it on the open road? wondered the wanderer, while he watched the dozen or so men huddled round their fire. Clearly the single guard they had posted was asleep. I’ve not been on a bike for a decade but it’s like riding a bike. I’d be gone before they knew what happened. If I wasn’t a peace lover, I could kill them all with my bare hands.

Thinking it through, Zeke didn’t take the bike. He knew it was the wise choice, being alone and unarmed, he wanted no grief from an angry motorcycle gang. Slowly and quietly, he withdrew into the bushes and bypassed their camp. A mile further on, he crashed out for the night in a small cave in a cliff, hidden from sight and danger. In the morning he trekked some more.

With aching feet from two weeks and close to a hundred miles of walking through the desert and scrub, Zeke laid up for a three day rest. The area he chose was a hilltop that overlooked the terrain below on all sides.

He had a thing for high ground, feeling safe and secure with no chance of surprise. His hill was three hundred feet high, easily towering over the plain below. Nothing moved on the warm desert sands, not even a coyote or wild cat. In the daylight Zeke spotted four rising smoke plumes, tens of miles distant where towns and cities slowly burnt themselves out. One is LA and the others must be other big population centres. I bet its fucking hell there; glad I got out when I did. I’m even luckier, having phoned in sick for work before the nukes fell.

From his holdall he removed a five year old MRE, a Meal Ready to Eat. This was a sealed pack of dry biscuits, a small bottle of water and a pack of apple pie. When opened, this small packet magically heated itself up. What more could a wandering man need?

“Tastes lovely,” muttered Zeke, squinting against the high noon day sun. While he ate, he gazed down over the plain looking for movement. There was none. His hiding place was a good one, a rock jutted out providing good shade and a useful hideyhole for him. Someone would have to be right in front of him to spot him. “The water is good, must be vacuum sealed,” he went on, to himself. Was he mad?

Finishing the MRE, Zeke carefully rolled up the cartons and hid them well out of sight under a big rock. When I leave, should I take my rubbish with me? Less environmental impact then, he thought, concerned that his rubbish could damage the local environment. Miles away, irreversible damage was done where multiple nuclear detonations killed a hundred and fifty million and poisoned the land forever. Happy with himself, he settled down for the day to sleep off his meal and await nightfall.

Stars arced high overhead, the Milky Way was easily visible to the naked eye. Zeke decided to explore his small hilltop. There was ample visibility by starlight alone. Hell, I feel like an old time cowboy! Maybe I should become one.

On his travels he found an old rusty Winchester rifle and an ancient cowboy hat in a half hidden building just by the summit. It wasn’t till he tripped over a low ruined wall that once belonged to a small room that he noticed the house. He careered forward and landed awkwardly, the wind was knocked out of him like dollars from a Vegas gambling machine. Looking round, he took shot of his position; he could just make out low walls and a slightly higher one with a bit of collapsed roof.

“Well I never! Must be some old timer’s house from way back,” Zeke muttered, rubbing his leg. “Damn near snapped my leg!”

For a minute he sat there, taking in the distant stars and planets. The burning cities still were on fire, he saw distant flames pulsating like a live thing and above the orange glows, smoke still climbed lazily high into the sky hiding some stars. What can be still on fire after two weeks? I hope all of the stars aren’t hidden by the smoke! Coz it’ll hide a wonderful view.

Slowly standing up, he carefully walked over fallen roof tiles, broken wooden beams and loose clay bricks. He entered what could still be called ‘a room,’ for it still was covered by the sagging roof, held up by old rotten beams attached to proud brickwork. He knew this place must be over two hundred years old, at least.

Under the slightly sloping roof, it was totally dark. This was no problem; Zeke took a small wind up torch from his pocket and clicked it on. He was careful not to let the beam be visible from the ruined room, at night light could be seen for miles and that brought unwelcome attention. Zeke didn’t want that.

“Just look at that!” he stammered, bending down to pick up a rusty rifle. “A bloody Winchester repeater. John Wayne had one in his old movies. Fuck, I wonder if it’s his.”

He tried the cocking mechanism but it was jammed solid. The wood was warped and dusty. It was obvious this antique would never fire again but he liked it and decided to keep it. Call me John Wayne, you dirty dog! Zeke laughed to himself. Shining the dim light over the small enclosed space, he saw an equally ancient hat balancing on a rusty nail on a beam. A cowboy hat!

“Goddamn what a rush! A real life cowboy hat, you got to be kidding!” he commented, reaching up to get it. With great care he removed it and examined it. Brown in colour, it was made of leather and was cracked and dusty. Blowing the dust off made a large cloud of it, he coughed and spat. This thing is as old as me! Zeke tried the ancient hat for size, taking off his old greasy baseball cap and pocketing it, it was replaced by a late nineteenth century cowboy hat. It fit! A broken mirror still hung on one wall. By shining the light, he was able to see himself in his new attire.

“Damn me to hell! The bloody hat fits, I look like a cowboy,” chuckled the old timer. “Nice hat, think I’ll keep it. And the rifle too.”

Looking around the rest of the small room, Zeke saw nothing else of use; he turned off his torch and made his way back to his camp. Now a happier man with a little purpose, he wasn’t just a man fleeing a nuclear devastated city. That old way of life was gone forever.

Lying down with his head resting on his holdall, Zeke slowly ate a MRE with his new old skool cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes to keep away the sun. His sun screen made from an old army blanket lashed to an overhead rock helped. It was three in the afternoon and a hot day with no breeze, the worst desert summer day imaginable.

Taking a pause from his potato stew, Zeke drank a shot of Tequila followed by distilled water. “Yes, this is the life, with my own quality company on my own lil’ hill and a nice place to lie up with some yummy old Meal Ready to Eats,” murmured Zeke, scratching his sweaty balls. “Only thing wrong is this bloody hot sun and radiation problem. Just shows I can’t have everything.”

Continuing scratching, his hand moved down and grasped his shaft of his penis and squeezed it, imagining blood flowing into it enlarging it. It did, growing in size and girth. Zeke had an erection. Struggling to open his old frayed blue jeans, he had to put his MRE down. After an age, his weapon was out in the open air and ready for action. His hand grabbed it hungrily and tossed it off angrily; a release of tension from his past few weeks. This feels really ace! Last time I had a play was when I lived in the city before the war, I had a job and a real girl to make love to whenever I wanted her. Now I only have myself. Now I’m a cowboy too, he daydreamed.

He did his masturbation, going faster and faster till he reached terminal velocity; his hand ached with the effort and his tool burned from the pounding it took. He was on the edge of orgasm when he wondered: Do I get Maisie out of my holdall and scre her? Use this on her? Before he could answer or use his love seed on Maisie, his question was answered. Zeke shot his load and screamed long and hard. His whole body tensed and his toes curled when his white hot sperm arched a metre in the air and landed everywhere, on the rocks and on him. His first hand action of the post apocalyptic world.

Zeke moved out of his mountain hideaway after another week of chilling out and being lazy. His feet and aching bones were healed now and he undertook a new trek to another location.

Avoiding the cities that had been nuked and now burnt themselves out; he ventured into the wilderness, a content and alert man. He knew anyone could be out here with him, escaping the devastated areas and taking a chance out amongst nature. Moving only during twilight/night-time when the sun’s heat was gone and the chance of being seen was low brought its own challenges. His visibility was limited and the going slower; this was fine he was in no rush. Would he rush if he knew where the radiation had fallen? He was sure the fallout would look like dust/ash and that was radioactive and to be avoided. It was a chance he took, not stumbling into fallout fields before it was too late, at night, infecting him. A big chance but none of it mattered, he felt really free and that mattered. Not a prisoner of his job or of the government and its taxes. He was really free, for now.

On his third day from his hilltop lie up, Zeke came to a new place that took his fancy. A stone canyon with a big thundering waterfall, it captivated him. Even by night it was something, he heard the distant thunder of falling water long before he saw it, then it took his breath away. Standing on the edge of the canyon and looking down, he saw the white splashes and spray made by the waterfall. But there was something else too. The waterfall glowed green, for some unknown reason. Radiation? No, it can’t be that or I’d see fallout dust upon the ground around here. Unless the water was contaminated upstream, was that possible? If so, then why did it glow?

He mulled over the issue in his mind. No it wouldn’t be like that, unless some freak new event in physics had occurred. That thought panicked him a bit but then he got a grip of himself and looked for a way down into the valley bottom. The green glow gave off enough light to see far enough and he spotted a way down amongst the jagged rocks.

I know why it glows! Bio-luminescence, algae on the rocks that glows green in the darkness, thus providing a kind of light. It won’t do it in daytime. I’ve seen it on the Discovery Channel ages ago; it’s the same in the ocean.

What Zeke missed was the fact that radiation was partly to blame. A hundred miles upstream, an American military base had been hit by a Soviet bunker buster weapon of immense size and power. The whole area around the target was radioactive for twenty miles in every direction and for two hundred miles to the north, from where the kicked up debris had mainly fallen. Such were the peculiarities of nuclear fallout. The ground water that collected in the very rocks near the same area, ran south to where Zeke was and carried the same radiation out into the open when the stream surfaced some distance away. This same stream had cut the canyon over millions of years and had algae growing there since time immemorial; only after the nuclear blast, did the algae glow. Zeke wasn’t aware of this. He took in the beauty of his new surroundings and wanted to spend some time here. How long would it take him to be affected and become ill?

At the water’s edge he knelt down and cupped his hand and drank the cool liquid. It refreshed him and tasted nice, not like tap water with fluoride in it or flat like distilled bottled water. He was fresh out of that and only had a few MREs left. Filling up some empty water bottles solved his water problem but what about food?

“See if there’s any fish in this hear stream,” he said, to himself. Rummaging in his holdall, he found his fishing kit and rigged up a small line, tying it to a rock over the remaining night time hours. He fell into a deep sleep where he sat, so tired and exhausted was he. Four hours later, he awoke with a start, wondering where he was and what the roaring sound was. Then he realised what it was and took in his location, his mind on pause while the beauty overwhelmed him. The box canyon was something to behold, a hundred and fifty feet deep and the same wide, ending in a huge white torrent of water – the waterfall that cut this very canyon!

A huge power made by nature. Suddenly his attention was snatched away by his fishing line twitching several times. A fish! Carefully he reeled it in and saw a little tiddler. Better than nothing!

With care Zeke took the line out of the water and reeled in the fish. It was a small one, he didn’t know the type but it looked edible. He managed to unhook it with some difficulty and bashed its head with a stick to kill it. I’ll gut it and prepare it then eat it. I’ll leave my MREs for another time, they taste crap anyhow.

After gutting it, setting a small fire and eating his fish, Zeke was happy. He’d done his first natural act of survival other than camping out and avoiding trouble. He was becoming part of nature. His old job and the bustling city were a million miles away and in a different lifetime. He was like Huck Finn, a real outdoors man, in his old cowboy hat, faded jeans and with his rusty Winchester rifle. How he had changed.

Like before, he explored his new place to find a spot to camp at. The waterfall hid a secret, a huge cave cut into the rock and hidden from view by the wall of falling water. No one would ever find him hear. At night the algae would give enough green light to see by, so it wouldn’t be totally dark either. He had food and water provided by the stream too. What more did he want? Just one thing, a fuck!

“Time to get Maisie out and exercise her,” he laughed, taking he rout of his holdall.

She was nothing to look out until he got air into her and she took form, her plastic tits stuck out like twin mountain peaks and her open love hole was like this cave he sheltered in. Maisie was a blow up doll! He got down and began his perverted fun with her, stripping off and screwing her.

Now he wasn’t alone, he had company. A blow up doll made in China.

She didn’t answer back like a real woman and wasn’t moody or wouldn’t refuse sex. His needs were satisfied whenever he wanted them, like now.

“How I’ve missed you my love, my Maisie. When we made love last time, the world wasn’t like it is now. I had my crap job and cramped home. I was a prisoner of the government. Now that same government is gone. They launched their missiles and created a war. Now it’s just you and me my love. You and me,” Zeke whispered, while he fucked his plastic blow up doll. Silently he wept for the death of his old way of life and millions of people who he never knew.

He fucked Maisie many times and never bothered to deflate her. She was his constant companion now, while he ate his freshly caught radioactive fish and enjoyed his stunning surroundings. He only left her when he went to swim in the deep green pool under the falls at night, lit up by algae. Slowly Zeke was dying from radiation from the water. He didn’t feel ill at this time and was happy, for the first time in his life. No one on his back telling him what to do, he was in charge of his life and that mattered to him.

The first sign of sickness came on his third week living in the cave behind the waterfall. He suddenly vomited up his breakfast of two small fish. In his mind he knew what it was, radiation! It dawned on him, why the water was lit up green at night; it glowed due to the radiation in the algae.

There was no panic; he accepted his fate and went for a swim in the same poisoned waters. This time, in the day, not caring if anyone saw him in the pool. He was a dead man walking but a happy and free man. Finishing his swim, he felt a little weak. Not even sex with his woman, Maisie, tempted him. He retired to his cave to rest but found relaxing awkward, his back ached and his side hurt. Is the sickness getting worse? That feels like my kidneys. Oh Maisie, it does hurt! I must rest now...

Eventually falling into a deep but troubled sleep, Zeke dreamed. He was in his first job and a new girl had started. She was quite plain in her looks but there was something special about her, this got his attention when he was having his lunch in the canteen. Not being one to go over and chat her up caused him much anxiety; he wasn’t like the other men in the factory who regularly chased skirt on a Saturday night. No, he was only a boy who had no experience with women. Zeke’s anxiety level grew so he had to look away when the new girl looked directly at him; she sensed he was staring at her. He flushed with embarrassment and looked down. The thing she did next both shocked and amazed him in equal measure. Why is this happening to me? Why does she have to sit there, looking at me? I can’t handle this!

“Hi, how are you? My name is Cathy. I’m the new girl,” the lovely red haired eighteen year old woman said. Her eyes were the deepest green.

“Erm... I’m okay, thanks for asking. I’m... I’m Zeke,” he stuttered, very surprised. He was aware that everyone’s eyes were on him. Even the ‘tough bastards’ who womanised every weekend without fail watched and there was no way he’d look them in the eye. There was no way Zeke would ever measure up against them.

“Nice to meet you Zeke,” Cathy replied with a stunning smile, her teeth were perfect.

“You don’t need to be shy, not with me.”

“Well... it’s not that. I’m not used to you know... female attention.”

“That’s okay, really. Don’t feel bad about it. I won’t hurt you.”

“Thanks. You’re so sweet and very kind with your words.”

“I try my best Zeke, I do. Hey, do you want to go out for a drink sometime?”

What the hell? Cathy is asking me out on a date? Yes I’d love to. But everyone is looking at us, especially the ‘hard bastards’ and I can’t handle that! Oh no, I can’t handle it!!! Every single eye in the cramped factory canteen was on Zeke, seeing what his reaction would be. He gave them what they wanted, in a fluster he got up and ran out of the door, knocking his chair over, leaving his half eaten lunch and leaving an open mouthed Cathy, who was as surprised as the rest of the nosey people.

Cathy should have got up and followed Zeke to console him but she didn’t, she ate the rest of her meal in silence and went back to work. Zeke didn’t turn up for his afternoon shift and was never seen again, by Cathy or anyone in the timber factory. She didn’t know but that same week, Zeke was drafted into the United States Army to do his basic training for the Vietnam War.

Awaking with a start, Zeke again wondered where he was. Like before, he realised over the coming seconds his predicament. And summoned enough strength to sit up and take a drink of water, rubbing his manhood at the same time. He felt a bit better.

“You want some fun Maisie?” he asked. “I bet you do!”

Zeke made his penis hard, ignoring his aching body. Some hair fell over his eyes, he brushed it away but was a little startled when it fell free and landed on the stone floor. He knew the reason why but got on with it.

“Come here old girl. I’ll make love to you and think of Cathy. Dear Cathy who I should have made love to and married. But no, I fucked up there, didn’t I Maisie love?”

Lying down upon Maisie, Zeke struggled to put his weapon inside her. Finally he managed it and began pumping away. Images of Cathy and her stunningly pretty face filled his mind. Quietly he called her name.

“Cathy, oh Cathy my love. Why didn’t we go out and get married? Cathy, it’s all my fault. Please forgive me. Cathy...”

Zeke wasn’t to know that beautiful Cathy was killed in a road traffic accident six years after they first met. She had been pregnant with another man’s child. A drunk driver took both the mother and unborn baby’s life.

Silently weeping, Zeke the ex army soldier who did three tours of Vietnam and who had survived the most devastating war in history and who was dying of radiation, finished his sex act on his fifty dollar plastic blow up doll. His body was finally purged of his loss and memory of Cathy. A huge weight lifted up off his shoulders. Inside, his soul felt free and his heart soared. His last bit of thread tying him to his old life was severed forever. A final release. His tears stopped and his head fell to one side. Zeke, the misfit who never fitted in anywhere was dead. Never again would his sensitive brown eyes see another dawn. Finally he was totally free. World War Three had stolen another victim...

By his side lay a nineteenth century cowboy hat and rusty Winchester rifle.

USE ME LIKE A BITCH

In the saloon bar called Den of Evil Bitches a party was going down. Located in the centre of a frontier town called Donkey’s Tail, where anything went and you could get away with murder, the bar was a right dive with sawdust on the floor, bullet holes in the walls and a hangman’s noose in the corner. This occasion was to celebrate Big Gun’s blowing away of his twenty first Native American Indian with his Colt 45 Peacemaker revolver pistol.

Signs of debauchery were everywhere: a whore from the Top Titty whorehouse was sucking the cock of a grizzled old miner who was almost comatose (was he feeling any tongue action?), a bent cabaret singer called Marly was licking the balls of another equally gay piano player while he played a drunken out of tune waltz. After a few minutes they swapped positions. Everywhere you looked, something was happening. Upstairs in the private rooms, mattresses were being pounded by sweaty cowboys fucking two bit whores. Where was the man himself? He was arguing with a holy man.

“I tell you, General Custer is a pussy!” shouted the voice, way too loud, at the person not a metre in front of him.

“No, no. Custer is a military God. He was meant to die so he could direct his fight from Hell! This I know, after all I am a man of God,” retorted the other, equally drunk and unstable.

“You’re wrong holy man. The only god is this, the barrel of a gun. Custer fucked up, pure and fucking simple. Custer is a worm eaten corpse. What, you disagree do you?” whispered the cowboy, now in perfect control.

“Yes I do, has it occurred to you, you’re wrong? Power comes from the good book, the bible. I talk to Custer’s spirit every morning,” replied the Preacher, placing his book on the small two seat table, next to the large pistol.

They complimented each other disturbingly.

“Not many men have dared to disagree with me Preacher man. I shot the last one in the back only yesterday, he’s now being measured up for a coffin by Tom the cabinet maker over yonder,” nodded Big Gun, pointing to his cocked Colt that was a foot from him. He could reach it immediately and blow the man of God to hell, if he saw fit.

“I know. I heard about that, I blessed his corpse before Tom took it to measure it up for a coffin. Even evil men need the last rights before they descend to hell. I’m not scared of you or any man, my God protects me.”

“Your blessings won’t do him any good where Small Harry has ended up. He dared put me down in front of the towns’ folk so I sorted him out, permanently. With this gun, I am God!” shouted Big Gun, picking up his big gun off the small wobbly table. He glared menacingly at the bible basher.

“Every man has the right to the hand of God and his blessing, even you Big Gun. Even you!” preached Preacher man. He visibly cowered from the bigger man and grasped his bible to his chest, as if it would save him from a .45 calibre bullet at point blank range.

Big Gun stood up and towered over the terrified little holy man, bellowed, “Open your mouth Preach and suck my pistol. Do it now mother fucker! Now!”

“Aargh! No, no, I won’t. You’re gun belongs to the Devil and his evil actions, as you do. I won’t do it!”

“Yes I work for the Devil. Now take the barrel in your mouth and suck it,” ordered the angry killer.

“No!” shouted Preacher man. His defiance was stopped by a single bullet fired into the table top straight in front of him. The bang deafened him and the table split clean in two and toppled to the floor; the bullet missed a pair of holy bollocks by two inches. A single empty glass rolled out of sight.

“Okay, okay, you and the Devil win. I’ll suck the barrel of your evil gun.”

“Good boy. I always get my way. Now suck it.”

Preacher took hold of the large gun metal tube that was the barrel of Big Gun’s pistol and placed it carefully in his mouth with a shaking hand. His other still clutched his bible. With wide eyes, the holy man sucked the barrel. It was still warm from the shot. He would be holy in more ways than one, if he screwed this up.

“That’s right, just like you’re sucking a cock. It looks like you’ve done this before. Have you?” asked Big Gun, holding the gun in his trigger hand and watching Preacher man suck the barrel with interest.

Preacher man tried to shake his head and speak.

“Ah ah, don’t do that. Just keep sucking the gun barrel; when you’ve done that, you can suck my sweaty cheesy cock too,” laughed Big Gun, almost blowing Preacher’s head off when he laughed.

My Lord will protect me and save me from all evil and the Devil’s actions. May Sweet Lord Jesus watch over me and deliver me from evil and not let me get my head blown off. Also bring Big Gun away from evil and show him the way to the light, amen! prayed Preacher man. He continued sucking, hating the taste of gun oil and gun powder residue. What choice did he have?

His God seemed a long way off from this awful scene.

“Right, that’ll do. Now you can suck my cock while I drink a new whiskey,” said the gunman, before addressing the barman, “Hey, barman! Bring me a new whiskey and fill the glass to the top. Do it now!”

“Yes Big Gun, on my way,” shouted the barman. He filled the glass up as he ran over to the corner where Big Gun was tormenting the holy man. The barman noticed the broken table but kept his mouth shut. He knew what Big Gun was capable of.

“Put it on the floor and leave the bottle,” shouted the cowboy. With his free hand he pointed his instruction, in case the scared barman didn’t understand, due to fear.

“Now where were we?” asked Big Gun, to Preacher.

When no answer was forthcoming, he rapped him on the head with the pistol barrel which was wet with spit.

“Erm... you wanted me to suck your cock,” whispered the victim, looking at the floor.

“That’s right. I want you to suck my cock,” shouted Big Gun, red in the face from whiskey and an abuse of power. “Get on with it then.”

Preacher man got off his small chair and knelt in front of Big Gun, who was still seated. Preacher went into slave mode; he passed his tormentor his whiskey glass, being careful not to spill any. Hell would be unleashed if he did!

“Good boy, you’re learning. Now undo my trousers and get my cock out. Make sure you don’t undo my gun belt by mistake or I’ll blow your fucking head off. Get on with it.”

“Yes Big Gun. Anything so you don’t shoot me, even sucking your cock.”

“Right then. Make sure you do it right and no teeth or I’ll shoot.”

Preacher man put down his bible and tried to undo the buttons on Big Gun’s dirty sweaty trousers. It was hard because the gun belt hung low over the buttons. Please dear Lord let me undo the buttons and get this over with so I can live and continue doing God’s work. Quite easily the six buttons opened allowing the holy man to draw the trousers open and reach in to get Big Gun’s cock out. It was like a small shrunken sausage with grey hairs all over it and blue ruddy veins all over it. A smell like old sweaty socks filled the air, making Preacher man gag. I’ve got to do this; I sucked his pistol barrel and never got my head blown off. My Lord protected me from the Devil then, he will do now.

“You undid my trousers easily enough. Now suck my dick, what the fuck are you waiting for? Instructions from God? Remember, no teeth!” Big Gun shouted, annoyed.

“I’m doing it now,” came his reply.

Preacher took the stinking maggot sized penis into his mouth, almost gagging on the acrid taste. He started sucking it, licking the bell end, taking the foreskin back and wanking the cock at the same time. He thought of holy cherubs to take his mind off this evil desecrating Devilish act. I’ll do anything to survive the attention of Big Gun and his evil actions that will stop me doing God’s work. My heart is pure and my faith is strong, protect me from evil my Lord!

Slowly the small cowboy’s cock became hard and grew to four times its size, a length of eight inches! The holy man was doing something right.

“This is good whiskey,” commented Big Gun, downing the contents of his glass. Carefully he reached over and picked up the bottle, refilling his glass. “Keep sucking just like that. You’re doing fine,” he told the bible basher.

What I’m doing is saving my soul from you, you evil killer who does the work of Satan! replied Preacher man, in his own mind. With swift head movements taking the dick all of the way into his mouth, Preacher made the killer cum. It didn’t take long.

“Oh my fucking god, that feels so fucking good. Hey everyone, look at this! I’m coming!” screamed the cowboy, getting the saloon’s attention. It was his party, after all! A hundred pairs of scared humble submissive eyes looked over.

Then he came. His back arched and he bucked his hips so Preacher man could suck even deeper. Amongst all this, a welter of white spunk made him choke even more. He bit down once more.

Preacher man wasn’t ready for the deep thrust and gagged when the cock hit the back of his throat, he bit down accidentally.

“Ah! You cunt, you bit me twice!” screamed Big Gun. He pored half a glass of whiskey over Preacher’s head and drunkenly fired a shot from his huge Colt 45.

Preacher man closed his eyes and raised his hand to wipe the stinging spirit from them. He was about to remove Big Gun’s cock out of his mouth so he could breath and spit the cum out, when the big fat bullet blew half his head off. A welter of blood, brains and bone spattered all over the place.

One eye hung on its optic nerve, staring lifelessly. The other rolled over the floor like a billiard ball, dead to the world. Preacher man fell forwards off his chair, dead.

“Damn, look at what he made me do! Look at this bloody mess! Anyhow, who gives a fuck about Custer or a dead holy man? Not me!” screamed Big Gun, losing control. He took a swig from the bottle, downing half the whiskey and looking down his nose at people in the saloon.

“Hey, get me a whore to give me a REAL blowjob!” he shouted, looking to the bar with wild unfocused eyes. “Now I said!” Spying Preacher’s bible on the floor the killer kicked it next to its owner. He fired two shots into the ceiling to make his point. “NOW! Get me a whore now. I want a real blowjob!”

A whore dressed like a real madam rushed over. “Why, Mr Big Gun, I’ll suck your cock. It looks a nice cock, it really does.”

“Get on with it, bitch!” screamed the killer, alive and in his element of psychosis and violence.

“Please sit down and I’ll do it,” quietly replied the whore, not wanting her head blown off.

“Yes, I will sit down, right now,” replied Big Gun. He sat down on his still warm seat, so he could have his second blow job, this time by a well dressed whore.

Her name was Emily and she was the best in her business, like Big Gun was the best cowboy and killer. She wore a classy out fit, a red basque and purple flowing skirt. Her feet were barefoot.

“I need to move the body first coz it’s in my way,” said the whore, looking into Big Gun’s soulless green killer eyes.

“Move it now then and hurry up!” he replied.

She inwardly grimaced as she grabbed hold of the Preacher’s blood stained jacket and heaved his still warm body to one side. He was heavier than he looked. Though she was careful, she got some blood on her hands. It reminded her not to fuck this blow job up, I could be blown away next!

“Okay, I’m ready,” she confirmed.

Sat on the chair, she leaned forward and held Big Gun’s cock, which was still erect. Was he turned on by the violence? Grimacing to herself again she put it into her mouth. It tasted like a dead slug and gave her no sexual pleasure at all. She started sucking the piece of gristle best she could, working the tip, licking the shaft, feeling his balls and wanking him every now and again.

“Not bad bitch, not bad at all!” complimented the killer, actually enjoying his second cock suck.

The whore mumbled a reply and kept her eyes on the job. I’m in the same position Preacher man was before he was gunned down dead. I thought I’d be shocked seeing a man of the cloth being queer but I’m not, it’s seeing him murdered like a worthless lame dog.

Big Gun took a swig from his whiskey bottle emptying it; he threw the bottle over towards the piano where Marly was still playing out of key music and having his cock sucked by his accomplice.

It seemed their blowjobs went on all night. Their action was interrupted when the empty bottle clanged off the piano and smashed into a hundred pieces.

“Hey Marly you faggot, get me a fresh bottle of whiskey. I’m all out of booze. Hurry up now!” demanded Big Gun.

Marly knew better than to argue and left his place at the piano and his gay lover. He reached behind the bar and got a new bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “There you go big man, enjoy your whiskey,” Marly said, smiling at the gun man.

Big Gun took the full bottle and said thank you! Everyone in the bar stopped what they were doing and looked over, shocked! It was the first time that Big Gun had ever shown any courtesy.

“No problem,” grinned Marly, uneasily. Big Gun must be losing his mind, saying thanks like that. Better leave him to his blow job. He went back to his knackered piano and gay friend. Music soon filled the bar again.

Cracking open the bottle with his teeth, he took a big swig of the golden liquor. Followed by another. “This is good fucking booze. And it’s all mine, bitch!”

The whore ignored this slight at her and continued sucking cock. She never liked whiskey, cowboys or guns for that matter; they were a bad combination and things like this happened. Flicking her tongue on his bell end and wanking him faster, she brought him to orgasm now. Aware of his moaning, she sped up and licked his cock like it was an ice cream cone.

“Oh you filthy whore, that feels good! Better than the Christian faggot, he couldn’t suck cock to save his life. Now he’s dead,” commented the cowboy, looking at the whore and over to the dead holy man.

Mad laughter came from Big Gun’s drunken form, his chest heaved and tears came into his eyes. He took another gulp of whiskey and laughed some more.

Definitely certifiable. But most of the frontier men and cowboys around here are, thought the whore.

Big Gun came a second time, with one hand he gripped the whore’s clean blond hair and forced her to take his cock all the way into her mouth. His spunk jetted down her throat making her gag and cough. His orgasm flowed through him, overcoming his drunkenness and making him feel alive. Every bit of his body pulsed with raw primeval energy. He screamed and shouted, took a huge draft of booze to empty the bottle. Tossing it blindly aside, he picked his gun and emptied the three rounds into the crowd by the bar.

When people started screaming and the music stopped, he pointed the huge pistol at the whore and pulled the trigger. The last bullet caught the pretty blue eyed lady of the night named Emily right between her eyes, like an egg shell the back of her head exploded. Before the force of the gunshot kicked her backwards, a reflex action forced her mouth shut. Two of her teeth shattered in this involuntarily act and the piece of gristle in her mouth stood no chance. She bit it completely off and then fell backwards, landing near the dead Preacher. Two sides of the coin, holy and the whore. Both murdered by a now dickless cowboy called Big Gun. Was this divine justice?

“Oh fuck, oh fuck! She bit my fucking cock off! She bit my cock off!” shouted Big Gun, hysterically. “The whore bit my cock off!”

No one was bothered. By the bar two people were lay on the sawdust covered wooden floor, dead. Blood pooled from big bullet holes. A third person, a pretty eighteen year old whore lay crying, propped up against the bar.

Her side was weeping blood, this pooled onto the floor joining the dead peoples’ bloody mess. Soon she would bleed to death. Upstairs there was commotion in the private rooms. They heard the shots and screams.

Marly legged it outside to go get the Sheriff. Three dozen people stood rooted to the spot in the saloon, not believing what had happened. Some drank, others stood whispering or shouting for more booze. It was self service, the barman did a runner. It was too much for him to take; he never wanted to see anymore lawlessness or killing again. Strangely only a few sober drinkers left the saloon before the law arrived.

Big Gun was bleeding to death, his pain shot through him wiping away his drunken stupor and sobering him up. He fell to the floor and doubled over, lying next to the two corpses. He whimpered like a lame dog, begging God and his mother to save him and heal his pain. It was way too late for that.

The Sheriff arrived in a commotion and joined the other disbelieving witnesses. With six strong men who were aspiring lawmen, order was soon restored. Big Gun was unceremoniously dragged to jail to hang in the morning. If he was still alive and hadn’t bled to death. Such was old town justice...

CHARLIE PLUMMER NATION WAKE UPPPP WE WONNNN CHARLIE PLUMMER IN DRAG & QUEER COWBOY THREESOMES DELIVERING ONE OF THE SENSITIVE PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR IN A BEAUTIFUL GORGEOUS FILM ABOUT FOUND FAMILY & QUEER JOY & HORSES STARRING STUNNING TRANS WOMEN & NON-BINARY PEOPLE

EVERYONE GET UP & WATCH THIS ASAP

seriously!! so gorgeous & tender & full of love ~ *thee* Charlie Plummer performance (although Miles Halter will always be in my heart) & Eve Lindley is a revelation!! Mason Alexander Park is also gorgeous, & Joey DeLeon who plays the younger brother is so sweet ~ a relationship that very much anchors the film. Queer cinema has been cleaning UP this year, as it should. This one’s essential viewing if you need a little joy & gentleness, which I think we all do with the state of things ~ this film both depicts & serves asa haven in a harsh climate.

WILLY‘S HANDS

Willy fixed everything with punches.

Once a week, he went for a walk with his friend, the nun. This time, like every time, she asked, “Is this the life you want to lead?”

Willy looked down at his hands, thick slabs of flesh and bone, and said, as always, “There is no other life.”

“Violence solves nothing,” insisted the nun.

“No, but death solves many things,” said Willy. “Where would the children be now if that oil man was still alive and had his way with this land?” He swept the horizon with the full wingspan of his right arm, as thick and taut as a yucca palm. The dirt and scrub stretched for miles.

“There will be another greedy man,” replied the nun.

“There can be another death.”

They paused at the gates of the orphanage. The children in the yard rushed to the fence to scream for Willy. With the precision and grace of a white-winged dove alighting amidst the needles of a saguaro, he gave them all high fives. The nun whispered a prayer and placed her tiny hands over Willy’s. He walked off into the blue haze of the desert. The nun never knew where he went, but she knew he wouldn’t go far.

The nun was never wrong. Her pact with God had given her the gift of visions.

She would writhe and contort in prayer every night and see each terrible thing that would befall the world. She knew the hour and the day when the next bomb would fall, when the next strand of a deadly virus would spring from a chicken’s eye to a farmer’s lung. She could see each gun cocked and loaded and pointed between a child’s eyes. But in this case, it only took common sense: their land was cruel but hiding many riches. Another man soon arrived.

This man brought a strange promise. His truck was new and filled with wires and circuit boards and lights. He tinkered and tapped, and he strung up the old orphanage like a Christmas tree before anyone could say a damn thing. “It’s for the children,” he said to the nun. “This will open their world.”

The nun sighed and rubbed her thumb and forefinger over the rosary hidden in the pocket of her work coat. She looked at the grandfather clock that her father had carved in another lifetime. The delicate brass hands read half past three.

“They will be a part of the future,” said the man. “They need to be connected.”

In the salon, the man hung up an enormous picture box. It came on with a sizzle of electricity, and even the shyest and smallest children came out of their favorite hiding spots to swarm to the light with the like the moths that crawled into the orphanage’s porch lights each spring and died. Pictures flashed before their eyes: an ancient temple, an athlete throwing a ball, a dancer leaping across a stage, a painting of lilies, an old man weeping, a pile of trash on a street corner, a sailboat cresting a wave, a beautiful woman laughing, an ugly man holding a gun. They flashed through the night and into the next day, never the same image twice. The children’s stomachs rumbled and their wide eyes watered and their tongues hung dry from their mouths like snakes’ rattles, but still they sat glued to the salon floor. The nun rocked and prayed. The man watched the children from a chair in the corner of the room until he fell asleep in the morning sun.

The clock finally began its noontime chime, a pretty little melody stolen from a song about a man who loved his wife, followed by the count of twelve. One the first bell, Willy opened the front door. By the third, he had crossed the front hall to the salon. By the fourth he reached the picture box and destroyed it with a single smash of his left hand. On the fifth bell, the man startled awake for just a moment of consciousness before Willy’s right fist slammed into the man’s chest, tearing through his rib cage and spitting his heart out on the other side. It plopped on the salon floor like a chewed piece of gum. His face hung in a scream until Willy’s left fist hooked it in time with the sixth bell. His head flew across the room and smacked against a window in time with the seventh. By the twelfth bell, the nun had snapped from her trance to hurry the children out into the yard. Willy followed behind, covered in blood, with one of the children riding on one of his broad shoulders.

”And who are you to judge?” asked the nun. “How do you decide who should die?”

The children rubbed their eyes in the sun and said nothing.

”Why would someone come to this place if it wasn’t to steal something?” said Willy. “I don’t know what he wanted to steal, but I know a thief when I see one.”

“There will always be another man,” said the nun.

“I will always kill again,” said Willy. He plucked the child off his shoulder and kissed him on the forehead, leaving a smear of blood between his eyes.

As the child ran off to join the others, the nun sighed and blessed Willy’s hands once again. She had no other answers, but she had already seen the end: a vision of Willy’s right fist plunged through his own heart, a single tear on his cheek.

THE MEANINGS OF CHESHIRE

DID THEY HAVE QUEER COWBOYS IN WONDERLAND?

PARTNERS IN CRIME

Riding double atop Reed’s brown-and-white paint wasn’t our preferred method of travel but, as newfound criminals, my friend and I weren’t given much of a choice. My own horse might have been loyal, but he spooked upon the first gunshot. Reed’s shot. By the time we raced out of the storefront, I was without a ride. Hoof prints plus boot prints would’ve given us away, so two cowboys a horse it was.

Banjo tried to buck us at first, but we held on tight Reed to his saddle and me to Reed’s torso. The whole ordeal looked a little funny but the discomfort was worth it, long as we made it out of town alive. What turned a supply-run for a camping trip into a shootout happened so quick that we barely registered what went down. Neither of us meant no harm toward the general store customers but, at the end of the day, Reed’s gun fired first. Didn’t matter that it was an act of self-defense. Wounds spoke louder than words here.

My friend, typically the more brazen one of us two, uttered no more than a few oneworded remarks as we rode out into the wild stretch of mountain terrain where nobody knew our names. We barely ate nothing that first night under the stars. Maybe it was our nerves but, deep down, we both knew our camping rations wouldn’t last us a getaway for long. Especially without my own horse, who’d carried half of our supplies, tent included.

“I shot him, Graham,” Reed whispered, curled in the dirt with his back to me. “I shot that guy.”

I dropped a branch into our fire with a start, waking a flurry of embers airborne. This was the first full sentence he’d spoken since fleeing town. Removing my hat and resting it brim-side- up in the grass, I stretched out beside my friend.

“After that drunk lunged at us with that foldout knife,” I reminded him.

“He wasn’t right in the head. Everyone else in that store was just itching at something to shoot at. Didn’t matter what, long as someone made the first shot.”

Keeping my left leg from rubbing the ground, I scooted closer, leaving an inch of space between us. Hesitation gripped me. Sure, we’d spent the day glued to one another atop his horse, but proximity among the boundless stretch of earth felt nothing short of intimate. My heart thrummed in my throat, counting the seconds down before Reed shoved me away or snapped at me for breathing down his neck. Instead, he slid into me, pressing his back against my chest. His shoulders shuddered a little.

“But my bullet actually hit someone.”

His voice broke, and it was one of the worst things I’ve ever heard. Sometimes I forgot how young we were just barely graduated. When Reed’s confident timbre took on this stress, I feared what kind of men this unforgiving world would shape us to be. I wanted to shake him by the shoulders, to jostle that guilt out of him before it made him into somebody I didn’t recognize.

“From what I saw, it was only a graze in the bicep,” I said. “Nothing fatal.”

Part of me wanted to roll away and pick at the shirt tied around my blood-soaked jeans. Reed didn’t know this, but scrambling through the shattered storefront window made a cut in my left calf. Deep, too. Our adrenaline-fueled getaway left no time for distractions, painful or not, so I said nothing while we hopped on Banjo’s back and galloped out of civilization’s reach. When we stopped in the woods to pee, I tied my flannel tight around the wound—jeans and all—to slow the bleeding.

In his hazy remorse, Reed didn’t notice the limp I developed, and I sort of wanted to keep it that way. Fretting over injuries would only slow us down.

Reed shifted uncomfortably. “What’ll our folks think?”

About what? I wanted to ask. About the shooting, or the way we’re spooning one another tonight?

“Don’t worry ‘bout ‘em,” I mumbled, watching silhouettes of bats flit across the starspeckled stretch of indigo above.

“And your horse,” Reed added. “Did he ”

Without much forethought, I draped my arm over his and held him close. Reed deflated into me, those heaving breaths tapering out. His greasy curls brushed against the tip of my nose. He smelled like sweat and campfire smoke. Comforting. Familiar. Like the home we’d never return to.

He didn’t speak until much later, when I figured he’d drifted off, except the voice that came out wasn’t his own anymore. It was somebody else’s, fresh in my memory.

“What’re you couple of queers doing with all that food there? You two runnin’ away from yer daddies?”

Instinct forced words out of me that tasted like vomit. Like poison. “We’re not ”

“What’s a drunk doing out in broad daylight?” Reed cut in from behind me. “Your wife kick you out of the house?”

“You better watch that mouth of yours, boy.”

Reed stepped forward, shoulders squared back. “I didn’t say nothing.”

“Okay smartass, you want to play it that way?”

That’s when I saw it: a flick of the wrist. A glint of metal in that man’s grip. Keeping his eyes fixed ahead, Reed passed me his heap of dry goods. “Go ‘head and pay for this. I’ll be right out.”

“Reed,” I said. A warning. The man’s beady eyes darted between me and my friend.

“Best you listen to your little boyfriend there before someone gets hurt.”

Again, habit drove me to blurt, “I’m not his ”

“And what if I don’t?” Reed tested.

It all happened so quick. The lunge of that man’s knife. The crack of a gun. Ears ringing. Bloodstained fingers. Swollen silence. Reed’s pistol trembling. Distant exclamations. A flurry of footsteps. Hands fumbling holsters. And me, dropping the dry goods. Stumbling forward. Grabbing my friend’s sleeve. Wrenching it toward the storefront.

“Oh god, Reed, get ” Bullets whizzing. Glass shattering. Sideways staggering.

“Graham! Graham!”

I jerked awake to faint sunlight and Reed shaking my shoulder. His face swam in and out of focus, expression indecipherable by crusty eyelids. He pulled me upright, shoving my hat over my brow.

“We gotta go. We gotta go now,” he rambled. His eyes looked terrible, like he hadn’t slept more than an hour straight.

I pulled my knees to my chest, wincing. Leaving that wound alone might’ve not been the best decision. “What? What’s going on?”

“They found us. It was the smoke, I’m sure.” Reed kicked a spray of dirt over the ash from last night’s blaze. “We need to get moving before they catch up to us.”

Sure enough, Banjo, already saddled up, sniffed the air and huffed, head angled south. Reed stuck a boot in his stirrup and froze, watching for movement within the southern rim of trees we’d crossed through the day prior. I shivered, missing the warmth of last night’s flames and my friend’s body heat pressed against me. That really happened, didn’t it?

“Who’s after us?” I mumbled.

“Wake up, cowboy. Who do you think?”

That drunk’s scowl, still branded into the backs of my eyelids, roused me into action. It hurt to put weight on my leg and, because of that, I almost kicked Banjo while boosting myself onto his rear. He would have run, too, had Reed not held him steady.

]We headed northwest, cutting into heavily-wooded terrain cushioned by pine needles. Although the sun crested the mountains to our right, the chill gifted by early morning didn’t dissipate with the dew. Wrapping my arms around my friend’s waist, I rested my cheek between his bony shoulder blades, pushing my hat crooked. Reed didn’t flinch. Didn’t do as much as glance back.

It occurred to me then that my friend didn’t dispute those insults thrown at us only steered them back to expose that drunkard’s own truths. What did that make our truth? Hell, Reed had been my partner in crime since day one. I loved the guy, but loved him? I thought about how easy it felt to hold him close. How much his hurt became my own. How scared it made me to picture him behind bars or worse, underground.

I thought about saying this, but fatigue rendered my speech useless. I dozed against my friend’s back, reluctantly dismounting Banjo to rest him every here and then. By late afternoon, the swelling in my calf had spread up to my knee. Reed, neck craned southeast, wasn’t paying attention when I jammed my boot in Banjo’s stirrup and miscalculated my mounting. With a whinny, the brown-and-white paint startled and backed into a circle.

“Hey, hey. Whoa, hey!”

One second, I was clinging to Reed’s waist. The next, we were sideways, pine needles prickling our cheeks and foreheads. My hat lay upside-down a few feet in front of me. Banjo’s snout touched my neck, nostrils flaring. Reed had him by the reins, steering him away from my face.

“Dammit, Grahammy!” He clamped a hand over his scalp. “Banjo’s nervous. Let’s settle here for the night and head out first thing in the morning.”

I sat back on my heels. “You think we lost ‘em?”

“I reckon.”

Setting up camp took barely no time at all without a tent. We strung up the rest of our food in a tree and stretched out in the grass, sheltered under the mere cover of trees. With half-lidded eyes, I watched Reed saw open a can of beans and spoon them out with that pocket knife of his. He ate them cold. No fires, he insisted, not until we were certain we’d lost our pursuers.

We rested flat on our backs that night, breathing clouds of vapor into the frigid air. Our shoulders touched. It was like any other campout spent inside our tent, except everything was different. We would never be those carefree friends like we were when we were boys. An infinity of truths weighed between us, most of which we’d never speak aloud.

Reed turned his head and whispered, “You’re shivering.”

“I know.”

“Here.” He sat up and spread his blanket over us both.

Temporary comfort. No doubt a fever was working its way through me, my body fighting a losing battle against infection. I wondered if Reed noticed the heat peeling from my skin under our shared blanket. I wondered if he even cared.

Soon, his open-mouthed snores punctuated pockets of silence between owl longings and coyote yips. I stared up at pitch blackness, dizzy. Turning onto my side to face him, I strained my eyes to watch his slack face. Asleep, he resembled the friend I’d known since we were boys. Out here, it felt like I didn’t know him at all.

Before I knew what I was doing, my arm was around him and my lips just barely brushed his.

Reed’s eyes flickered open, reflecting the tiny sliver of moon. Realization gripped him with a snort. He shot upright, still tangled in my embrace. Twisting around, he shoved me hard into the dirt. It knocked the air right out of me. I raised my arms, to soothe him or shield myself, I didn’t know which. Reed pinned me down, those bony knees of his digging into my ribs, and gripped me hard by my shirt collar. I had no room to roll away. No time to brace for him slamming me back into the earth.

“The fuck is wrong with you? Huh?” He shoved me again. “I don’t do none of that queer bullshit.”

That ugly word, thick and frothing through his rage, tore through me like a bullet. “I ”

“See, pulling this crap is why we’re stuck out here in the first place. I even defended us in there, and look where that got us?”

I almost said it again, like I did in the general store. We’re not. But somehow, speaking those words into existence hurt more than his punch did. More than the incessant throbbing in my wounded leg did.

“I just thought…”

“Yeah, well you thought wrong, cowboy.” Reed stood and spit. He wadded up his blanket and stumbled off into the dark, leaving me curled on my side with nothing but my own clothes to protect me from the cold.

I rolled to my stomach and, pushing myself upright, gasped through my teeth. My left leg felt like a foreign being sewn onto me, heavy and useless, throbbing to the same quickened cadence of my pulse. Using a decent- sized tree limb as a makeshift crutch, I hobbled in what direction I could only guess was south. Away from Reed’s panting and Banjo’s nickering.

I hoped whoever was after us caught me. I hoped they took me far away from the friend I loved dearly. I hoped it was warmer in hell than it was here.

“You be the sheriff. I’ll be the robber.”

In the bitter dark, the past mingled with the present. The smell of manure and alfalfa tickled my nostrils. Squinting ahead, I swore I saw those stables Reed and I used to play in as kids.

“How ‘bout we both play robber. We’ll be partners.”

“Partners in crime. That’ll do.”

And then we bumped fists.

The branch clattered across my feet. I dropped to one knee, trembling. Sweating. Hurting. I touched my face and it came away wet. That memory from our childhood faded grainy, dissolving into stardust.

Something touched my forehead. Someone’s fingers. Then their lips.

I just about jolted out of my skin. My hands went for the stranger’s neck, meeting with resistance. They wrestled me back, shushing me. Telling me it was okay. Brushing the hair out of my face. I breathed. It was light out.

Rough bark cut into my back where I’d been propped upright. My friend’s voice called me back.

He hummed low, soothing phrases like how he sweet-talked his own horse. His gloved fingers traced my jaw and stroked the spot behind my ear. Leaning in close enough for me to smell his breath, he pressed his lips to my face again.

“What’re you doin’?” I slurred

.

“What’s it look like? Checking you for a temperature.” Reed wiped his germs away with the back of his hand, as if that would make a difference. “You’re running hot. That’s not good.”

His lips had been cold, plush, and wonderful against my skin. “How’d you…”

“If you were tryna run off, you sure didn’t do a decent job of it. Found you passed out just down the creek that way. Could’ve drowned, had your head been turned the other direction. You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

Against my better judgment, my eyelids slid closed. With Reed cradling the back of my head, fingers tracing through my hair, I surrendered my mask of courage. I probably would have drifted off, had it not been for his voice calling me back into relevance.

“Sorry, bub. I need to look at what we’re dealing with here.”

He straightened my leg out and untied the filthy shirt. The bloody layers of flannel and denim clung to my skin, an adhesion so strong that he had to cut back the fabric with his pocket knife. I blanched, thinking of that flash of metal, of the gunshot that followed.

Reed froze. “Jesus, Graham.”

Even without looking, I sensed how hot and bloated the area around that exposed cut had become.

“It don’t hurt too bad,” I lied.

My friend shook his head, chewing his lip. All of that anger from the night before blanched from his cheeks.

“This is bad,” he sighed. “And you just let it get that way. Why didn’t you say something?”

I hesitated, swallowing the lump working its way up my throat. I remembered the way Reed’s voice broke that first night on the run. The way his back shuddered against my chest. I’d tried so hard to be brave for him but it was only a matter of time before I cracked, too.

Reed got up and rummaged through his saddlebag, producing a canteen of his own water. His hands shook while unscrewing the lid, tipping the contents out over my open cut. Producing a folded bandana from his back pocket, he wiped at the blood and grime collected over a few days of negligence.

Our eyes met. I knew that look. Those empty pupils. That mindless fidgeting.

“We should turn back,” he said at last.

The knot between my ribs lurched. “No.”

“We have to. I’ll sling you over Banjo’s saddle if I have to.”

“Reed, no. I’m not letting you turn yourself in.”

Reed drove a fist down on his thigh. “Look around, Graham. There’s nothing out here that’ll save you.”

I grabbed my friend’s wrist. Reed stiffened as I brought the back of his hand to my lips and held it there. His ice-cube knuckles soothed my scorching cheeks.

“You’re here,” I whispered.

My pulse thrummed in my ears as I braced for him to correct me, to shove me, to ignore my infected ramblings. Instead, to my surprise, he lurched forward and kissed me straight on the mouth. The suddenness of it startled me, and he would have peeled away had I not pulled him back by his shoulders.

Reed fell into me, his hat tumbling loose into the tall weeds beside us. I combed my fingers through his dirty hair and he cupped the back of my head like he did when checking my temperature. His lips mouthed apologies against my ear and I shook my head, wrestling him into Banjo’s front legs.

That horse made a chuckle, almost as if calling us fools in his own kind of language. And maybe we were, because how did we plan on making it back? How were we to have a future from here? And how had that general store drunk figured us out before we did ourselves?

MY TWIN SISTER FRANCHISES ME

She’s on me like school glue & I can’t take it so I cut her off. Sticky fingers like boneless wings I Gillian Welch my way out of Texas with my banjo & a film can rattling with fifth string capos. I plan to sing my way out of hell. But I meet the devil on the pull-off, that lick I could never meager out / pump tire / bump the last of my coke & rename the banjo Old Realizable. Call her Liza for short. Devil don’t like when people pretend to be other people. Because that’s his whole deal. He invented it. So he steals my fake ID & wears it right in front of me. Liza, he says, pretty name for a girl like you. I say you know that’s not true. He says which part? & I turn heel & dust before my face gives me away. If the devil look too long he’ll want to lock in the price while you’re young. Like he’s gonna be your groom & your pastor & your father all dummied by the same rigged dice. Twin catches up while I’m breaking to drag me back to our act. She guns for my scruff. I say I won’t sell it.

She points to our names on the record label. I say that’s not my name.

I curse how many times I say it. I curse it all the way back.