After leaving my horse and buckboard outside the general store I wandered over to Annie’s Eatery. Too bad Old Ma Slocomb was in there with that telltale friend of hers, Edna Dale. Though it did me some good to fill my gut I was glad to get away from those clucking females, and I had no time for Sam Bowden’s yap when I stopped by at the barbershop. Still tetchy after a haircut and shave, I figured I’d get my supplies and get along home, only my eye was taken by a dress in a window… all shiny and blue, it sure looked pretty.
“A little small for
you ain’t it?” said a voice at my shoulder.
Cordelia, proprietor of the whorehouse and owner of the finest heaving bosom since creation, nudged me aside to get a better look. “Who’s the lucky lady?”
“Nobody, nobody at all,” I said with a shrug.
“You ain’t fooling me Valance,” said Cordelia, with that sneaky female look in her eye. “Whoever she is, she’s gotta be something special to have you on a hook.”
Well, while I stood there looking all dumb and sorrowful, she slipped her arm around mine and asked if I needed a little cheering up.
I shook my head.
“My, you really got it bad. Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
As her footsteps faded along the boardwalk I took one last look at the dress in the window, and tried to imagine how it would look on a certain little lady. I ain’t in the habit of turning Cordelia down but right there and then, the only thing I needed was a drink.
Whatever the time of day, The Frisky Duck is always lively. Somewhere in the smoky haze Dem Golden Slippers was being murdered on a piano, I couldn’t help but notice, as I eased my way twixt blowhards and barflies, and called for a glass and a bottle of whiskey. In no mood for horseshit and hard luck stories, I tossed a handful of bits on the bar and hurried to a single chair, at a single table, on the far side of the room, getting as far away as I could from that irksome piano. There, with my back to the wall, I filled my glass and settled down for a peaceful drink.
“Say Mister, do you know whose chair that is?” someone said. An old timer, I figured, from the croak in his voice. I ignored him.
“Mister?”
I kept my head down and rolled a cigarette, hoping he’d go away. Didn’t matter to me whose chair it was; if the local firebrand wanted to stake a claim later, I’d be happy to kick his teeth out.
“Hey, Mister!”
Slowly, I raised my head. Yup, an old timer, the kind that wears his pants up to his whiskers and can’t mind his own business.
“I don’t mean to trouble you, but I reckon you ought to know that’s Smiley Doolan’s chair.”
I’d heard tell of Doolan before, and maybe I was a little curious. Since the old timer seemed hell bent on bothering me anyway, I lit my cigarette and leaned back in the chair.
“I ain’t one to speak ill of the dead but for him I’ll make an exception,” said the old man, as others gathered round. “Benjamin Ambrose Doolan was born bad, yes sir, spawned by Satan himself he was, and nobody in this town would disagree.”
“Yet you called him Smiley?”
“Doolan smiled whenever he had the devil in him, and he smiled an awful lot. Why, folks lived in fear of a man that once killed three men in a day; two were slain in the street; the third ran away, only he didn’t run fast enough. Doolan caught up with him and gutted him with a pitchfork.”
“Nobody go for the sheriff?”
“He was on the end of the pitchfork. Some say Doolan killed upwards of thirty men. Yes sir, he piled a heap of misery on a whole lot of folk, and he was no less evil when he turned seventy. He barely had a tooth in his head by then but grown men still crossed the street when they saw him coming. Anyways, Doolan came in here almost every day and he always sat in the same chair in the same place, right where you’re sitting now, and that’s where he was on the night he got what was coming to him.”
The old timer paused. Maybe he was catching his breath. Maybe he was playing to his audience. I took a shot of whiskey and eyed him over the rim of the glass.
“Men like Doolan don’t make many friends, but they sure make a lot of enemies. It all came back on him when a young boy was found dead in an alley with his throat cut. Harry Slater, the boy’s pa, was blazing mad when he came in here and though Doolan saw him coming and went for his gun, he wasn’t fast enough. Slater jumped him and when he dragged Doolan outside, some fifteen, maybe twenty men followed them into the street. Doolan kicked and screamed and pleaded his innocence, but it did him no good. Knowing he was about to die, he damned the false courage of men in drink and swore he’d come back and take revenge. He still had that devil smile on his face when they strung him up and left him dancing in the air. Well, that was twenty five years ago and nobody’s sat on his chair since.”
“Did he… come back?” I asked, as a murmur spread through the crowd.
“Nobody knows for sure, but there ain’t a man in that hanging party still alive, and most of them died suspiciously. I’d be mighty careful if I were you, Mister.”
Thoughts of Doolan were long gone by the time I arrived home, when an hour spent unloading the buckboard, alone, made me realize how much I missed Housty. It shamed me too, to think of all the mean things I’d said to her but even so, she had no call to lump me with a frying pan. Danged woman. It ain’t good for a man to brood over a woman. He needs to occupy himself somehow, so I occupied a rocking chair on the porch, uncorked a fresh bottle and bared my soul to Nameless.
Late in the evening when I was fuddled with booze, my gaze was drawn to distant treetops swishing in the wind, where silvery moonlight dueled with shadows in a battle of light and dark. If Old Swirly was getting angry, I didn’t care, since my mind was at peace and my heart was aglow from the whiskey inside.
But all that whistling and swishing was making Nameless fretful and a whimper from him stirred me to my senses. Though I remember feeling chilled when I sat up, what happened next I ain’t sure. For the sake of my sanity let’s say I went to bed and had the most awful dream…
I was back on the porch… wind blowing… Nameless getting jumpy. Just as I reached out to stroke him, an almighty gust of wind howled through the porch, so bad that it set the timbers creaking. That was too much for poor Nameless, who bolted inside with his tail between his legs.
Time I went inside too, I figured, though the shiver I felt as I got up from the chair had nothing on the shiver that shot down my spine when I came face to face with a smiling apparition… Doolan!
Doolan’s ghostly grin widened as I let out a yell. In words never taught in Sunday school I hollered and threw a punch, but my fist passed clean through him and I stumbled off the porch. With mocking laughter ringing in my ears, I got up and ran around the house to the back door, but when I got there, Doolan was waiting. With my chest thumping and the wind rushing in my ears, I ran every which way, but wherever I ran, Doolan was there, waiting, grinning, laughing. All out of running, I staggered into the open barn and backed against a wall. Sure enough, Doolan was in there waiting for me. Grinning like a loon, he picked up a pitchfork and closed in. He was all set to skewer me when…
I woke up in a sweat, screaming my head off with my hands protecting my pride and joy. Hell, that dream was about the worst ever. I was still shaking when I came out of the outhouse and had a nervous peep in the barn this morning. And I’ll give you one guess what I found embedded in the wall, right where I’d been standing in the dream. Yup, a pitchfork. Strange, ain’t it?
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