WEAPON
OF MY DELUSION
PART I:
THE DAY THAT I DIE
By B.
C. Szot
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 B. C. Szot
All Rights Reserved.
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
Szot, B. C.
Weapon of My Delusion, Part I: The Day That I Die
Authors and Publishers-United States-Fiction
Cover Art by Imago Design Group, Copyright 2009
WEAPON OF MY DELUSION. Part I:
THE DAY THAT I DIE
B. C. SZOT
“Well, that’ll
be the day,
when you say goodbye.
Yes, that'll be the day,
when you make me cry.
You say you're gonna leave,
you
know it’s a lie,
‘Cause that'll be the day when I die.”
– Buddy Holly
“I say violence
is necessary.
It is as American as cherry pie.”
– Hubert Geroid “H. Rap” Brown
TABLE OF CONTENTS
9: Mojo Risin' & Sympathy for the Flock
12: St. Stephen & The White Hot Rabbit
13: Went for a Ride, Got to the Bottom
14: Nothing Can Come Between Us
15: Lovely Rita & The Infinitesimal Divisor
17: Our American Cousin, Reuben James
18: The Saturnine Face of the Lunar One
24: Down, Down into the Tolling Flame
25: Back in the Saddle a Different Way Once More
27: A Bridge Into Trebled Water
PREFACE
SEVERAL ATTEMPTS HAVE BEEN MADE to bring to light those curious and savage events said to have occurred along the Midwest and down through Texas during the autumn of 1996. The enterprise has been made difficult by the elusive nature of the criminals involved, these belonging to both the KBH and the MCC crime rings, plus the fact that the Federal files related to these occurrences are questionable, amounting to a mere two pages in a confidential document called the FBI Purple Papers. (One page is wasted simply on the FBI’s logo… although it does, admittedly, have a rather good one).
This being said, now that the rumors have failed to die almost a decade-and-a-half later, it seems fair to re-open the book at this time on one of America’s darkest, most blood-curdling secrets.
What follows is an endeavor to use very large, impressive-sounding words. Secondly, we will attempt to tie together the theories, gossip, and facts (but mostly the gossip because that shit sells) that shed light on these days when the twentieth century was coming to a close. In all irony, the conflicts described herein, too, brought to a close that monstrous organization which many still consider to be nothing more than “urban legend,” yet still managed to somehow leave its mark on America for over two centuries in the blood of tens of thousands of bodies it buried across it.
(Its members were even said to sing a song to attest to whose America this really was:
“This land is my land,
This land is your land,
From the place I bury you,
T’ where the worms carry you….”
The song was supposedly punctuated with the sounds of cannon fire or bludgeon weapons cracking over people’s skulls – and not necessarily those of the victims.)
Regardless, clarifying the truth has been made even more toilsome by the very dastardly nature and efficiency of the cretins involved, as well as the disruptive civil war that is thought to be taking place within the organization’s ranks as of this writing, making it unlikely any member will talk.
In short, the only ones who might finally reveal the truth… are six-feet deep in the soil and long ago liberated from the digestive tracts of worms.
Not that this has never stopped historians, of course.
Yes, lucky for us all, there is always some artist (also read: “overeducated asshole”) who comes along with his own version of the truth, filling in the holes with enlightening fight sequences, enriching sex scenes, elevating dialogue, and other things that begin with “e” to thus paint a dazzling revelation upon an eager world canvas.
1: HELL'S BELLS
A PSYCHADELIC MOON PIERCED the swirling haze above Melady, Wyoming. Nothing much came through this one-time hotbed of the Wild West, where cowboys had daily traded their lead for steed. No: since 1892 it had been a withering reed in the desert and, like so many of its brethren, the roads which fed into it were lined with shaman and wrinkled ranchers alike who warned the oblivious traveler to keep clear, for “Nothing that comes into a small town ever leaves. Even the tumbleweeds,” they would sing, “find that there lies only one profitless path through the humble hamlet… because the claws of the small town are the hawk’s: sinking effortlessly, tightening relentlessly, and hauling you back the further you tread towards the great, beguiling horizon.”
One hundred years later, however, there was still a group – a band of lethally ferocious rustlers – who made active use of inconsequential burgs like these. Yes, there were certain businesses which blossomed in the shadows, like a disease untended, far away from the newfangled contrivances of the righteous-living, citified beau monde. Many a law-enforcer had tried to make heads-or-tails of these villains and their natures; some had even attempted a brotherly connection only to meet their ends in a smattering of blood and bones. And fail again and again they would, for the links these monsters must have had to anything societal or humane had perished long ago with their vestigial souls.
But don’t get them wrong; they still knew how to get jiggy with it. – And this they did in style:
The Hammerhead Grand Hotel sat on the loftier edge of Melady. It was a stately establishment which proudly boasted structural cunning unchanged from whence it was built. Yet, the massive cypress rafters had lost their purpose to retrofitting (even if they did still look quite useful); the once sensually fluted wainscot was now retouched and cartoonishly tame, and the “half-of-a-tribe of Crow Indians” who had been mixed into the original foundation were no longer mentioned within the pages of the latest, politically correct, promotional brochures.
Still, the hotel was Melady’s centerpiece and had been from the day it was built one hundred years ago by the Confederate general, Wilton Bursah, one of the few stubborn rebels to find fortune, personal renaissance, and fabled fame after walking away from nearly winning the Civil War.
Legend had it that instead of overrunning the Capitol as ordered, the general declared that he would rather “tangle with broads and beer than his fellow man” and disbanded his unit. His superiors apparently disagreed with this decision and set after him. Thus, it was then that Bursah set out on a serendipitous adventure with his pet wolf, Lucky-Ash, one that even Pecos Bill couldn’t match. The two dashing renegades, man and dog, began their escape by putting on disguises and entering a series of bear-wrestling tournaments. Neither had a talent for fighting bears, but the duo employed crafty secrets and secret crafts Lucky-Ash had gleaned from days spent listening to the “wise ripples of a pond” and Wilton, while observing the purple honeybee. (1)
After trouncing every bear in Alabama (and making lifelong friends with several), the two pocketed the winnings, lassoed a pair of tornados, and rode them out west. After carving out the Mississippi River with nothing more than a jack-rabbit’s tail bone, and numerous other larger-than-life adventures, Bursah became an engineer on the fastest passenger train in the West and, with Lucky-Ash at his side, re-routed a line as they headed to Wyoming in search of untamed adventure.
Along the way Lucky-Ash scared off attacking Indians with the “biggest durn bark this side of the Mississippi.” The noise (which was said to echo for two days straight and was even heard by the King of Bavaria) let loose avalanches all along the state border, burying their train in snow. The two tried to lead the passengers along a risky pass to safety, but this turned into an adventure just a little more grand than any of Homer’s.
In summary, the rest of the traveling party died to waterlust, greed, a giant shoemaking ogre, and frostbite fairies all while violently bickering over how to again turn tornados into a form of mass transit. Eventually the feisty pair of Bursah and Lucky-Ash struggled onward alone from winter into spring.
After forty-nine days like this, the haggard general and brave dog paused in the middle of a drought-ridden plain. Bursah had grown weary and sensed that his legendary life was coming to a close. Looking up to the sky, he watched the clouds zip by as though in accelerated motion: Time had dropped his dead weight and moved on without him.
Who was he to die at this stage? Was he not a living legend at the prime age of thirty-five? When he saw an opening between the clouds he yelled to the Heavens, “I beg your damn pardon!”
Indeed, it was slightly rude that the Heavens hadn’t planned a better spectacle to welcome him, and for this, there was going to be some hell to pay. He waited for another opening in the clouds and then bellowed, “With the ruckus I’ve wrought down here, are you honestly ready for my likes up there?”
Neither life-replenishing rainwater nor heavenly chariots came in reply.
Wilton groused, “Can you believe this tarnation?”
Lucky-Ash cursed in wolf-tongue.
Indeed, they gathered that his incredible, mortal tale was about to reach an end without the decency of a heavenly parade, mind you.
For hours he rebuked his Maker, reasoning that lassoing a cyclone alone was worth a few trumpet blasts. Yet, no response. He announced then that he refused death (“That’s right, I said it! Ain’t goin’!”) without a dignified answer as to why he, who was clearly a legend, should suffer a fate so prosaic.
It was said that the winds (for they recognized his greatness) accepted his request for comfort. They buffeted him upright so that he could sleep in between polite admonishments and Divine snubs. For hours the legendary general and dog wavered in the wind and would not die. It is still said to this day that in honor of them, all cacti now refuse to fall nor do they drink much water but stand firmly with their hands held high, posing as Wilton Bursah did when he told his Maker to get with the program.
Finally, not even the winds could hold them. The stubborn soldier collapsed to the earth, followed by his obedient dog. It seemed Death would not be glorious but just… unimpressive.
It was then that the earth quivered from deep below… as though the ground were clearing its throat with a rather insulted “ahem.”
Thus, it dawned on the general that he may have made a substantial oversight… that perhaps this whole time he had been… “shooting a little too high.” Taking a moment to adjust his hat, he spoke a bit more warily towards the powers below:
“I see then. Well, Satan, if you are the actual party in the receiving line for my soul, which I reckon now seems to be the case – ” (He stopped there. A tear fell from his eye and two sniffles from his nose. Bursah bawled suddenly like a child.)
(Then just as abruptly he leapt up, slapped his hat against his ass, and danced for joy.) “Are you truly prepared for the likes of me yet? Yeehaw! I’m gonna ride ya’ like a tornado, you fine-skinned, cloven-hoof milkmaid!”
The ground trembled, for all of Hell erupted in protest. Finally, thought Bursah, a response!
A hawk-like Bird of Minerva was then ejected from a gulch in a sputtering of feathers. Bursah scratched his head regarding this sort of reply, uttering something that involved “tarnation.” (Lucky-Ash suggested with a growl that they simply eat it.)
The bird, however, landed upon a lone cactus (one miraculously unnoticed by Wilton till then). Upon it, four flowers blossomed. The general was still perplexed, but Lucky-Ash quickly figured it out. Through a series of barks and paw stomps he said that they cannot die, see: Legends were just too big for the afterlife.
Bursah clung to Lucky-Ash’s tail, and the wolf lovingly dragged his master to the bird. A smile soon cracked Wilton’s lips when, while tapping the base of the cactus for water, a sparkle of unearthed riches caused him to squint. Behold! The jittery afterworld had bought him off with precious metal. After a few mule treks back and forth to the Rawlins line, Wilton founded what would eventually become the town of Melady. It gave him wide eyes in exchange for aches in his workers’ backs, but it would make him one of Wyoming’s most celebrated benefactors.
Rumors that the actual pepper-bearded general was considered by his colleagues to be a half-wit – one who lost more of his men to starvation and malaria than any leader in Civil War history and then surrendered his tattered regiment to a group of escaped, yet still bitter, slaves – is often left out of the lore. So, too, are the reports that for his consistent stupidity on the battlefield (which repeatedly left large tracts of the Confederacy’s western front undefended) General Bursah was awarded a statue… by his enemy… which stood where his battalion was scattered and thrashed in Nepheshville, Alabama.
He refused to appear for the unveiling, but the Federal township felt it was the least they could do to honor a bumbling man who yielded them more territory in less time than any of their own generals. Even the statue itself, the only likeness of the general to ever be produced, is surrounded in rumor and fable after being reclaimed by the earth in a mudslide and never found again.
Some argue, however, that Bursah – like most legends – never actually existed. But, like that of most of his kind, the notion is inconsequential since legends, for better or for worse, act as history’s peepholes, left behind as cryptic gifts for the curious lookey-loo who wants a gander into Reality’s dressing room.
In the case of Wilton Bursah, for instance, a disgraced colonel by a similar name had existed, but in truth he had only eked out a pathetic post-war existence as a food taster for a cross-dressing circus clown. After being set upon by authorities for several “intolerable crimes against fine-skinned boys” in the towns they had traveled through, Bursah beat up a doddery widow, stole her laundry basket, and hightailed it out of town in blouse and bloomers.
In his misinformed attempt to find Savannah and sail to Europe, he measured the sun’s grace upon the Earth’s vertical blossoms and stumbled in the wrong direction never to find the Georgian seaport. Instead, while blindly crawling through the Western territories for weeks, the half-crazed Bursah found himself pursued by vultures that tore at him and his clothes. After having eluded them thirteen hours later, the now naked colonel tried to commit suicide.
It was at that time that a duo of miners came upon a naked man who was throwing himself atop cacti without much effect. The generous miners took him in and nursed him back to health. On their way back to Rawlins, they revealed to Bursah that they had discovered some gold and were returning to town to get more appropriate equipment. They also handed him a very detailed map. Right after that, both suddenly fell dead from “heat stroke.”
It is important to note that History favors the man who outlives his companions, becomes significantly wealthier than them, or is providential enough to be without them from the get-go.
For Bursah, it was all three.
To this day, in fact, Annabelle Bursah, the general’s granddaughter who now ran the Melady Tourist Board, denied with much success that there was any truth to the rumors of “General” Bursah’s lackluster war career, penchant for little boys who loved clowns, failure at all things (even suicide, for crying out loud), or that “heat stroke” was in actuality “sharp blows to the back of the miners’ heads.” And thus, for posterity’s sake, General Wilton Bursah simply became one more of the multifarious instances where legend made for a more expedient, commercial history than the stingy hen of Truth could yield.
* * * *
Perhaps the same held true for those inside of the Hammerhead Grand Hotel on this October night in Wyoming. Past the doorman’s post where a small, bunny-eared television played the static-laced State of the Union Address of “Wild” Bill, the Arkansas governor-turned-president, a celebration raged within.
Deep inside the furthest hall, burlesque dancers stomped onstage to the clanging piano of a mustachioed player whose facial hair wriggled as he sang. This wasn’t his usual fare – in fact, he had never heard of Melady until a cryptic inquiry into his entertainment services turned into an eight-hour, blindfolded ride in the bucket seat of a full-throttled Harley.
He had arrived just as his clientele settled into the private banquet hall where waiters and bartenders were adjusting to their new surroundings (just like he). The dancers, whom he presumed had never been here before either, improvised a routine.
He was ordered to play. As he tickled the plates, he couldn’t help but to periodically glance back at the leather-clad, fashionably course, dreadful cretins who seemed to be getting wildly out of hand as the liquor flowed like lightning and the night progressed into bedlam. As it turned out, this troupe of performers would be the first of this shadowy clan’s to live to play another day. Over the past sixty-odd years, bartenders, musicians, and dancers from scattered towns would receive cryptic inquiries into their services, disappear in the early afternoon to an undisclosed location, work a night for outrageously generous pay, and then end up buried together in a desert or swamp without ever having known the identities of their ultimate audience.
Naturally, this was just how their audience preferred it – and how they had remained as folklore, like so many of the groups Common America never noticed in its urban nights. These ruthless professionals – cowboys and cowgirls of the societal underworld – were the oft-whispered about, but never believed-in, King Bounty Hunters. Once a year one unlucky, small town played host to two hundred of the most fearsome mercenaries who were nothing less than the means to ruin for the unluckiest of prey this side of the Rio Grande.
With my paintbrush in hand and peering through the window of my canvas, I wrested portraits of these tiers of killers, catchers, and henchmen. They were distinguished in degrees of experience from highest to lowest: “Elites,” “Intermediates,” and “Tenderfoots.”
I tell you I am not one of them. I only serve as the artist who saw the truth and, brush in hand, delicately painted a reflection of what was, what is, and what should have been. I will try to paint within the lines for you, deciphering the colors of emotion and interpreting the words as hues, much as the musician interprets them as string and percussion:
There, beyond a cold-blooded Elite slithering his way from barstool to barstool, a Tenderfoot gambling away his last coin with an avalanche of dice, and an aquatically contoured Intermediate pile-driving waves of lager – there you would find the hero/anti-hero of my current study. Don’t eye him for too long! His mind is ablaze and his brow furrowed. Do you wish to know what he is thinking in that powerful frame which seemed to carve his existence out of the space surrounding him? Well…
He wasn’t sure when he realized “it” had vanished. Not a physical life, mind you, but the one where he felt elation, restiveness, and despair.
Now, you can look. – His name is Joe. Yes, the colossal ebony man in the teeming trench coat – a coal black statue of efficient ferocity. He is twirling a half-eagle coin in his left hand. His determination once solid as granite, a storm now brewed in his heart. His cheeks formed sharp ridges which complimented his handsome, burnished eyes like a handshake from Atlas to Earth, and his sculpted head was shorn so smooth that even bullets were said to slip aside, passing into the distance with veneration.
These hands, thought Joe, had thirty-five years of human destruction in them. So, what was there that they could not subdue?
Now, calmly look a bit to his left. Yes: those two KBH who watch him so intently: Lovely Rita. She’s the thorny-rosed skirt in her ripe twenties over there. – Yes, it’s okay. You can look now. – Adorned, she was, by the tattoos on her biceps and the leather straps which somehow constricted around her flesh to form apparel. Her scarlet hair was curled up tonight, threading into itself like the grain of fine plywood on a blistering summer’s eve, her fingers stirring like wind-blown branches tapping upon the windows of her teeth. Propped up by elbows amongst a plateau of incendiary liquors, she could feel the nocturnal air squeeze her smoldering sternum. Hacking on her own breath, she let fireballs of whiskey douse her heart in fumes once more.
To her right, now:
See, there beside her is Casey Jones, a train-ridden yet loveable meth-addict promoted much too soon to the Intermediate rank. His hands felt like baseball gloves fumbling with an empty shot glass. Abruptly he stood to throw it across the room. Several bounty hunters hurrahed as it smashed into bottles of Talantine Rum, these shattering atop the shelves above the bartender’s wincing head. A flurry of glasses joined the assault, some sailing into the bartender till he was slumped out behind the bar.
The other KBH laughed. Casey Jones didn’t find the humor in an unconscious mixologist, for he was too drunk to stand and serve himself. So, his next drink would have to be through the vein.
Once Jones filled his arteries with a needle’s-worth of barbs n’ Mexican brown, the room blurred, yet he could still discern Joe pondering something at that distant table. The drugs seemed to say to Casey, “There, there is the miserable man who holds your sister hostage – the one who you yourself seek like the empty, elusive moon.”
Casey didn’t remember having a sister, but he trusted the drugs more than he did Joe. His mind then drifted to the sticky, alcohol-glazed floor. It reminded him of a checkerboard, specifically a game of shogi – a game he, interestingly, had never heard of before. The thought alarmed him, and he imagined an invisible, kingly stack on the distant side of the board. To challenge it would be lethal, but safety was his as long as he didn’t move his piece first to start the game. A mirage called out to him (from somewhere in the hallows of his veins) and it foretold that a first move against the enemy would soon be required.
“How can this be?” Casey slurred aloud in horror, but into the void. “Who is my enemy?”
The premonition’s only reply was: He’s within sight.
Fair enough. He liked his friend, alcohol. It had always tried to help. So, he looked about.
“There’s something different in the air this year,” said Rita.
Yes, but Casey couldn’t put his fuzzy finger to it. He saw the same thing that he had seen every year: a notable collection of devious outlaws.
“Like always,” whispered he to Rita, “there’s Breeze, drowning her foul mouth in gins and lusty tongues.”
“True,” Rita admitted. “And, Sweet Baby James, showing off a body exploding with tattoos that rival the works of the Louvre.”
“Mean Mr. Mustard, rolling cigars with paper of the finest currencies.”
There, too, was one called Happy Jack, laughing at the voices in his head which were telling him secrets about his peers and daring him to pull the pin on his hand grenade; Syster Chrystyan, making plans for her next quarry as well as a manicure; Leroy Brown, tossing around his guitar and composing ditties to the lives they had recently snubbed from the Earth; Rueben James, acting uncharacteristically quiet and heading out the door on a mission he thought no one else would find out about; Lucille, groping her lover and two other huntress’ flings while looking for pointers on making a better kill; and Lola, dolled up in his mascara and muscle, now beckoning Casey to join him upstairs to search for his pet snake so he could finally check into his room – something, as fate would have it, he would not be doing this night.
In Casey’s eyes, each of his peers made love to the world’s emotions as they always had – but for the first time, it seemed each had seen a ghost as well.
“It’s like,” Casey mused in his euphoria, “we’re in a room full of men who have suddenly realized their mortality – or that they aren’t as invincible as they once thought.”
Rita told him to stop letting the drugs do the talking. But, he couldn’t hear her. The collective laughter and jollifying sounded like a Gregorian chant, a choir singing on high to the fruits of knowing both how to live life… and take it.
Joe didn’t notice any of this. For the first time, the room looked desolate. Instead, he perceived an impenetrable glass wall where beyond lay his reflection. It felt as though his hands were bound by teeth of a needling, dead calm. The bounty hunter tried to revive his senses by recalling a time when killing had its thrill… its completion… its distinction. He dreamt of only weeks ago when he was looking upon captured Quarries kneeling before Casey Jones, Lovely Rita, and himself. That was when it started, yes: killing had neither conclusion nor demarcation to Joe, but was now only a paycheck taxed by the job itself. As he pulled the trigger, something terrible occurred! Although his bullets ripped through the Quarries’ heads, these remained kneeling as they were and no blood drained from the holes he made.
More and more Joe feared that the line between life and death no longer existed.
He fired more rounds. But, the Quarries did not react. They just looked back at him, as though in pity.
Somehow, the souls remained, defiantly refusing to impart even this trivial gratification that his existence had any consequence whatsoever.
Joe dreamt of a few days ago. (It was during his greatest torment.) He had run out of gas near a tiny, one-horse town called Nepheshville. Bending to his knees, this bounty hunter grabbed a fistful of dirt and held it to the wind. He tried to find meaning in the earth, within blocks of dust, from where Man came and returned – but the Essence he sought had since deserted it as well.
The wind carried the rest of the sand away. A dead scorpion was all that was left in hand.
Now trudging up to the fourth floor in the Hammerhead Grand and towards his room up the hall, he barely noticed a fellow King Bounty Hunter. This one had eyes which were ironically set so wide they were said to resemble a hammerhead shark’s. Joe didn’t know it now, but this hunter had been busy performing a role similar to Santa’s: leaving “gifts” for all. More of a diabolical, Mephistophelian Santa in a top hat is what he really was, mind you. With a playful shush about his forefinger, he gave Joe a wink and crossed paths, for he had a present in store for him, too.
After this pasty killer disappeared down the way like a shark in dark waters, Joe unbuttoned his coat and pressed a hand over his shaven scalp. Squishing all thoughts from his head, he slid a key into the swelled lock of room forty-nine and entered.
Perhaps an Essence had left Joe when he saw his woman for the last time.
Joe’s woman, a robust, seductive peach born on the banks of the Euphrates thirty years prior, combed her blanketing hair before a cheval glass mirror within room forty-nine. She looked up to a painting in the room – that of a stagecoach – and she wondered how it had gotten there, for it hadn’t been here hours before.
Yes, I think, when the bullets eventually penetrated her, he felt nothing: no loss. No desire for vengeance.
A corkscrew, etched with Navajo words and imagery, rested on the trestle vanity near her open purse. Only minutes earlier she had just tried to kill someone with it, and it had been taken away.
Now, like a haunting dream, it had returned. Like… a Christmas present.
She turned to Joe as he entered, and she radiated love with the most beautiful of smiles. “Joe! What a sight for sore eyes, you are.”
From a pistol, four bullets burst.
Joe next dreamt of a desert, one he had never seen before. As he pulled the trigger, the projectiles’ cracks slurred out of synch. The sky heaved with a strident hammering, clouds roared, and the fluids inside the bounty hunter scraped his cellular walls, ripping up the highways into his heart. The pistol continued firing, although his fingers tried to let go. Its smoke then sucked back into the barrel.
Joe’s eyes reeled when he realized that it was true… for the first time ever, he felt like an intruder in the world of the living.
Moments earlier at the party in the Hammerhead Grand, you would have seen a stout man with side chops, adorned in majestic white, donning diamond-rimmed sunglasses, and sporting glittering, gold rings on every finger. His name was Boss Samuels: the leader of the King Bounty Hunters for ten of his forty-seven years of glistering life. The rings flickered light onto adjacent hunters as their owner signaled for Joe.
He stood in response and approached his own reflection in the precious-stoned sunglasses. Joe felt that Boss knew the Essence – the man tasted it with every lash of the tongue.
“Joe! Joe! C’mon over,” Samuels chortled. “Ain’t this the finest affair I’ve had? Ain’t this blue-blooded?”
Joe’s eyes revealed nothing, and for a breathless moment Boss was paralyzed by their nihility. Yet, he chortled again. Soon, there was complimentary cackling from the juicy hussies seated about him. Samuels ensconced himself back into their mindless frenzy of desirous cooing, alternating between whispers and shouts as he crooned to this lusty audience. “Ladies, fools throw rocks, blaming water for the ripples, but there’s no mistaking this man! Joe’s soul is granite.” – Samuels growled as he beat his sweltering chest. – “Incorruptible!”
Indeed, Samuels wielded his own Essence like a yoke over the necks of his King Bounty Hunters. As plainly as they were misanthropes, I assure you the whole of them were his minions and family. Samuels ran the organization like a stagecoach driver: a master whose control is derived by blinding servants to the chaos within.
Behind Joe, the burlesque dancers could be seen beginning their break. A bounty hunter (whose Essence seemed forked like the underbelly of a bridge) placed a double-barrel to the pianist’s mustache and declared that no one broke at this venue – although, admittedly, he wasn’t opposed to the opposite point of view. In fact, this paradox was one he was hoping the piano-playing mustache could settle before his gun went off. Ten seconds were what he gave.
A stocky, redneck of a KBH in tie-dyed jeans stumbled up behind Samuels. His name was Captain Jack and he drunkenly pressed the key to room forty-nine into Samuels’ hand. “Your woman,” he whispered in slurred words. “She’s eager to see you.”
Outraged, Samuels gave the key to Joe instead and hissed, “Joe’s woman’s in forty-nine, you drunk sonofabitch. Not mine.”
Captain Jack immediately corrected himself through a confused attack of hiccups. Still, he noticed Boss holding his breath in anticipation, eyes darting before Joe’s furrowed brow and the hussies who anxiously jostled in hope to instead join Joe upstairs. For a frightful moment, it seemed as though some words had been spoken which came dangerously close to providing a looky-loo through Reality’s dressing room door.
As a double-barrel blast burst behind them, Joe slipped the key into his trench coat. Momentously, he patted Samuels’ shoulder. Boss thought he sensed a tidal force pulling Joe away. Strangely, he thought, too, of a horse of his he was going to need to put down in the coming days, poor thing.
Joe tipped Captain Jack with his half-eagle coin and departed towards the stairway. He passed the stage on the way. Elated that only his piano had taken the buckshot, the pianist struck up some music for a charming funerale cancan (although the shotgun had indeed limited the key range).
“I don’t deserve him,” Samuels beamed in a crescendo as he excused himself towards an elevator. “No one does!” He tried to walk in Joe’s footsteps until he entered the elevator, but that was all, for where they went he could not follow.
Some would say the bounty hunter did find that Essence which so eluded him.
The half-eagle coin felt heavy in Captain Jack’s hand. He tried tucking it into his pocket, then upon his tongue, then over either eye – but in his drunken stupor he decided it just wasn’t meant for him, so he flipped it indiscriminately into the air. To the opposite side of the room it flew, over Lovely Rita as her heart grew bloodthirsty while she watched Joe continue towards the circular stairway. The metal smack of the coin onto Casey’s adjacent table rattled her though, bringing her arm to leap and thus sending tequila spilling forth to saturate the floor.
Jones leaned near the coin. It mesmerized him as it spun logarithmically along the table.
Some would say the day Joe found his Essence was the day his friends traded him for money.
Casey’s fist smacked the coin flat. It seemed like a death knell rang, and something reflected upon the face of the half-eagle. Jones’ eyes widened: it was he and Joe shooting at each other on the dusty streets of an unknown town. The first blood will be soon, said a voice in his head.
Casey pushed his lids against his eyes….
Open – and gone. The nightmarish image was nothing more than an induced trip.
As Joe ascended the wandering staircases, he imagined himself upon a canvas. The bizarre image of him as an upstanding business man pictured with his child and wife, a carnation between the teeth of the last – this flashed through his mind.
Some said the day he found the Essence was the day a juniper was thrust into his heart and from there began to blossom.
Joe approached room forty-nine. Inside, his woman looked up from her mirror to the wall where the gaudy painting of an old-fashioned stagecoach hung. The piece made her think of Samuels: its panicked driver clinging to the flailing reins of a horse which galloped furiously towards the cliff.
Then there were others who maintained Joe found his Essence the day he broke from the stagecoach and left his master’s hand.
As he peered out the window towards a strand of ghostly cottages, Joe saw me. Yes, I was there, hand raised above the city with a paintbrush aimed forebodingly over all. I painted myself into a corner, appearing as a simple Comanche artist down the way, tying an “On Sale” tag to several porch-side chimes, all of them shaped like peace symbols.
A few may say he found his Essence the day he risked “what is” for “what once was.”
Then Joe imagined… no, he knew it was a prophetic vision this time: he could make out a sign on a distant desert road somewhere, next to rivers flowing with blood. Across the sign, a violet scarf was hung like a snake, its barbed ends fluttering in a blizzard of incendiary powder.
There is one, however, who would say the day he found the Essence was the day that he died.
A freshly branded word was still steaming upon the sign (or was it a tombstone? – it was impossible to paint a clearer picture at the moment). The word – if not its meaning – was clear: “Stagecoach.” Joe wondered at the significance: would he have to travel far to find peace, or was it barreling down upon him like the wheels of a stagecoach?
Perhaps it was best just to run now and ask questions later. When he exhaled, the air roared out like a motorcycle’s engine. His woman would soon be dead and Joe would be wandering at ninety M.P.H. into the dark, unaware that those who had been his comrades would now begin lassoing their ropes about his neck, effortlessly, relentlessly, one by one.
2: THE SPORT OF KINGS
SEEPING THROUGH THE MISTS OF MALEVOLENT MAUVE, the moon dropped from the night’s spangled dress and skipped about the tree lines like a child with a bag of mischief to unload. As it somersaulted over a cliff, it tickled the belly of a cloud and then rinsed itself in the fleeting shower. But then and there, a cacophonic rev startled it so that it quickly scurried off behind the treetops.
Bending the branches apart, it could see a rider in the night with a drapery of dust sweeping anxiously behind him. This reminded the lunar one of the charioteers it had seen some two millennia before who would streak across the deserts but not without troubled looks skywards. To disappear was their game, yet the moon enjoyed a chase whenever the hotfooted wayfarer was feeling sportive.
Wafting between the burnishing trees which polished their shine, moonbeams giggled in delight as they tried to keep pace with the speeding motorcyclist. Ahead, the moon could make out a dilapidated windmill creaking as it was churned by fingers of a snoring breeze, and the lunar one wondered if the rider would stop there to play. It leapt over the road and slid against teetering ponderosas as it sought a place to hide.
A spot was found: a rickety, weathered barn. Hastily the moon sprang skyward, tucked, and then splashed onto the back of the rattletrap roof where it slid into a haystack and waited for his playmate to cry hello.
The barn’s red paint had outlasted its owners, and the weathered – yet still imposing – main doors kept curious vagabonds from entertaining any expectations of a cordial reception. From behind this obstinate door, the whites of an Anglo eye peered out through a knothole. It darted with a blink before it allowed an Indochinese mate to take a turn. Shadows and blackness could veil all sorts of wretched miscreants, but tonight had turned the tables in a most uproarious manner. As both took turns looking outward into the night, neither could heretofore spot the engine of the distant Stallion, and now, with the moonlight abruptly obscured, the teeth below these eyes found themselves chattering.
Moonlight reemerged from behind the barn to reveal a ghastly rider parked before it. His Pescert 10’s motor hummed (though he did not kickstand), and the helmet made his intentions indecipherable. His leather, paletot-styled overcoat was faded and embedded with dust – a hint that the garment hadn’t been much the rage since the KBH golden years of 1969.
The rider held his fist out and up, the back of his hand facing the barn door. The Anglo and then Indochinese eyes, taking their turns within the barn, retreated to allow a peculiar pistol into their place. Not the standard issue, this weapon was a precious, special item to the KBH: a “weapon” in the vein of a handshake or embrace.
On the back of the rider’s hand were four freckles (only the most observant might notice them on every KBH) tattooed in such a way that to connect them would yield a diamond. The trigger on the gun was pulled. Ultraviolet light shone out from the knothole. Immediately within the diamond-framed freckles appeared the Jolly Roger (a pirate’s skull and cross-swords) atop a metal gear, and a coin placed like a bowtie.
This was the mark of the KBH.
The moon heard the barn’s huge door slide open. Climbing to peer over the roof, it watched as the rider zipped inside. The lunar one grimaced in consternation, retreated, and knelt. Brushing away clouds with a “Humph,” it peered into an upper windowsill.
The barn door was pushed closed again by several King Bounty Hunters. The bones of long-dead livestock littered the floor beneath them, these former celebrants from the recently vacated Hammerhead Grand Hotel. Many of the KBH had gathered at this makeshift safe house in one of the more reclusive tracts of land of a very reclusive territory.
As the rider’s Pescert 10 Stallion rolled in, he passed a clearly agitated legion of peers, many of whom had to ditch their dates in the woods, or rattle off rounds to hush the less-reticent. The hunters were sobering up, reeling from unfulfilled carnal pleasure, and wanting to know why they didn’t get to check out before torching the place. It wasn’t the KBH way to skip out on a bill – even if no one was going to be around to cash the check.
St. Stephen put the ultraviolet gun back in its holster. But it was the Anglo’s and Indochinese’s eyes which followed the rider in. Interestingly, both orbs belonged to St. Stephen. He had the peculiar distinction of being a mixed race who literally appeared, right down the middle, to be a mixed race. This Anglo-Indochinese bounty hunter of twenty-eight was by no means the most menacing of the horde. However, he held a multi-faceted, coveted role which it was rumored his predecessor still wanted back in a most lethal way. As the door shut out the world and its moonlight, Stephen ordered that riders ignite their Stallion’s lamps so that the proceedings would not have to be as dark as their collective souls.
The newly arrived rider, presumed to be the scout that Boss Samuels had sent off nearly an hour ago, pulled his Pescert 10 up to a rail and kick-standed to a stop. The scout dismounted and removed his helmet, wiping back his graying hair. Stepping up amongst the gasps, it became apparent that this wasn’t the scout – it was actually a weathered, old timer bounty hunter named Poor Tom.
Suddenly, he found himself searched for weapons by his one-time peers. No weapons were found, but still…
“You should stay right where you are,” hissed Stephen.
Beneath his fifty year-old forehead, scarred by a bullet-graze many years back, Poor Tom carried a rattled skull brimming with omniscient secrets that only the weak were allowed to know. The following ones, however, would be for free: “The Hammerhead Grand still stands.”
Donned in his diamond-studded sunglasses, Boss Samuels completely forgot about the other scout and stood up from his jury-rigged workstation to blurt, “What! – What’d they find?”
Other than that of a wry grin of jacked-up teeth, Poor Tom rarely emoted. Tonight was no exception as he continued his singularly cryptic, yet indispensable, role. The wall of KBH separated before him like a tribe clearing away from the damned.
“The fire do not spreads past the second floor,” he replied. He had an accent, one he called Franco-Midwesternite-Chesapeakean, that made even his words sound… deceased.
Pausing as he interlocked his fingers, Boss pointedly asked, “And what about Joe’s room, forty-nine?”
The brows furrowed and leather jackets yelped as they tightened amongst the bounty hunters who glanced about. None but a few had gained much clue as to where this conversation was headed, nor why there was such a rush to pillage and flee the Hammerhead Grand at all. They had always followed orders, but in the past they always knew the reasons why. This time, they were in the dark… just like their prey usually was.
It was all very unnerving. This was not the KBH way.
The badges and Blue who tried for more than a century to hunt the King Bounty Hunters down failed because they didn’t understand how a band of outlaws whose very livelihood was borne of – and depended on – the “Suspension of human rights and due process in order to enhance personal gain” (2) (in other words, “breaking laws”) could actually obey any bylaws, even if they were their own. In the minds of the enforcers of Society and Order, the way of the KBH was impossible. This assumed, however, that lawlessness was anarchy.
Unlike the Joe Blows of America who wanted criminals out of their lives, the King Bounty Hunters (and any other group which believed its needs superseded the limits of the Law) had an advantage. Samuels liked to reason that it all started with naturalized citizens. Only they were put to the test and then forced to swear an “allegiance” to uphold their share of a constitutional bargain in turn for liberty. All others – no matter how useless – got it for free.
It was “one nation under-guarded by individuals with lip-service and Judge Judy for all,” or so would jest Samuels with a hand over his appendix.
He concluded that most people never deserved the protections of their government. They would bitch if any of their rights were infringed, but yet felt unenthused to enforce those laws which they didn’t like, each of their own choosing, each of their own convenience, thus leading to foggy, ever-changing, consistently disagreed upon, bi-polar, buffet-style law. American Law, that is.
“Or-ganized annn-arrr-chyyyy, by the dawn’s earrr-ly light,” Boss loved to sing. “The eas-i-est to exploit, the kind that has lost all will to fight! – God save the spleen.”
In Samuels’ eyes this was the fatal loophole that allowed organizations like the KBH to flourish. See, criminals needed laws, too. Their own laws, that is. For even aboard the ships of those savage pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries, there were “laws” – Pirate Codes arguably more enforced than the codes of the societies they pillaged.
In fact, the Samuels’ scintillating lineage included two dreaded privateers, both of whom served aboard ships where a Pirate Code was in effect. When the buccaneer groups (some who would evolve to form the KBH) eventually left their ships for cattle-rustling, they took these rules with them. For instance, Slippery-Lip Arnold, one of Boss Samuels’ ancestors (who had fearful shot despite a distracting drooling problem), had served aboard the ships of the legendary Captain Roberts. There, he swore over an axe to uphold the Pirate Code, one which included rules still on the KBH books today:
“Each man shall keep his piece, cutlass, and pistols at all times clean and ready for action.” (3)
“Every man shall be called fairly in turn by the list on board of prizes, (4) because over and above their proper share, they are allowed a shift of clothes. But if they defraud the company to the value of even one dollar in plate, jewels, or money, they shall be marooned.” (5)
“If any shipmate robs another, he shall have his nose and ears slit (6) and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships.”
“The musicians shall have rest on the Sabbath Day only by right. On all other days by favour.” (7)
Another ancestor of Samuels was the dreaded pirate No-Ass Edward. (Although savage, his fellow crewmates were particularly hard on those who couldn’t fill in a decent pair of trousers.) No-Ass Edward had sailed alongside Captain Lowther of the Delivery before taking command of his own ship, the Labour, where the KBH lifted more for their Code:
“The captain shall have two full shares of booty, the quartermaster one-and-a-half, and the doctor, gunner, boatswain, and master one-and-a-quarter.” (8)
“He that shall be found guilty of unlawfully taking up a weapon aboard the privateer, or any prize taken by us with intent to abuse or strike another of the company, shall suffer whatever punishment the captain and the majority of the company shall think fit.” (9)
Slippery-Lip also served (and drooled) aboard the Revenge, where Captain John Phillips had some useful codes:
“If any man shall offer to run away, or keep any Secret from the Company, he shall be maroon’d with one Bottle of Powder, one Bottle of Water, one small Arm, and Shot.” (10)
“That Man that shall strike another whilst those Articles are in force shall receive Moses’s Law – that is 40 stripes lacking one – on the bare back.” (11)
“If at any time you meet with a prudent Woman, (12) that Man that offers to meddle with her, without Consent, shall suffer Death.”
Numerous groups of pirates, in fact, had worker’s compensation. (13) Payment was made in Pieces of Eight, therefore a loss of an arm could get you 500 pieces. A loss of a left leg might get you 400 on better ships, but, the right leg paid a good hundred more (so, “Step with the right”).
These were only a few of the Pirate Codes which evolved into the Code. The greatest command – the one above all – stated that anyone who should betray the KBH, kill another KBH, or reveal its secrets must be hunted down without quarter. It was the only time a KBH was allowed (and required) to kill another.
The rest of it was pretty simple: eyes for an eye, teeth for tooth sort of bit. The simplicity made it so feared that the KBH, in all its years, had never had to go out and Quarry one of their own under the auspices of the Code. Perhaps, when one’s life was lived on the razor’s edge, nothing was more consistent than the yearning for at least one thing in life to be dependably consistent.
* * * *
Poor Tom, though ostracized from the KBH, had become an invaluable source of dirty gossip and clean intel. There was usually a price to pay for this, but this morning he was spilling it for free. He answered Samuels query about whether room forty-nine had been destroyed as ordered by replying, “Joe’s room do not burn. The Blue get evidence from it on the now.”
The makeshift desk flipped and slammed onto its back. Adrenaline surging through his sweating brow, Samuels swung his hands, hoping to upturn more. “Where’s Captain Jack?” he bellowed.
Though playing pocket pool in his tie-dyed jeans, Jack went for sober and dropped his bottle of lightning as the barn shook.
“A fine Scrub you did there,” Boss roared, looking like a boar with crackling sideburns. “What went by the downside? In all my years, the KBH’ve never left a scene of business so soiled!”
Captain Jack snorted the palm of his hand as he retreated around a beam, pleading, “Boss, I didn’t have the time. I splash’d as many fires as I could, but the Blue – they came so fast, I – We had to up n’ out or we would’a got jacked.”
Captain Jack noticed that the surrounding faces were just as lacking in empathy, and then in a panic he looked for his burn crew – most of whom had retreated out of clear sight. The trembling bounty hunter paused. He knew it looked bad for him, a man of cover-up responsibilities who had sworn off the drink to be, well, drunk, but he also knew what he saw. With all his might he pled, “This wasn’t no Scrub, Boss. ‘Cause it wasn’t a job – no Sheaf! No Quarry! This was just Joe. He was all at fault!”
Quickly he retrieved his bottle from the floor and patted off the sawdust. With a twist of the cap, he welcomed its kinetic escape.
“Precisely,” Boss exclaimed as his forefinger shot into the air. “Now we’re exposed ‘cause of one man’s recklessness. One man’s… disregard. His callous selfishness. All I’ve done for Joe, and he leads the pack of Blue nippin’ at our heels.”
Lovely Rita had been keeping it on the D.L. for the now and there, but her voice leapt out before she could clench it in her teeth. “Now, Boss, nobody got jacked, and they’re only lifting prints from his room.” After pointing this out, she tried to turn the statement into a question by a series of gestures that never seemed to yield the effect.
“What d’you think will happen when they catch Joe?” the boar with sideburns boomed. “You think they’re not going to bargain with him? Entice him with a break from the chamber, chair, or noose? If he’s gonna break The Code with a four-pop into his bitch, what makes you think he’s going to stay quiet when his back’s against the wall? Will he sacrifice his hide for one of you? For me?” (He noticed he got a little better reaction with the second to last question, so he repeated it for good measure.)
A ratty, lizard-skin-wearing hunter lowered his pipe. His name was Mojo Risin’, an elliptical, lanky sort with a thin face and a nose that resembled a hatchet. He had tattoos within his palms, secret rejections of his former life where he not only blessed himself in a daily devotion but had an assembly who was riveted by his every proclamation.
He closed his eyes, raised a hand, and offered in reply, “Do we gun down n’ scrub the probing Blue?”
The others shouted him down.
Mojo squinted at Boss through his mallet-faced, Chamaeleo spectacles which rested uncomfortably upon his nose. Atop his brow was a boot mark, as though someone had recently given him a good kick or, as he liked to think, he had been marked by a tongue of fire. He was beside himself, therefore, when this congregation rejected him.
“No,” Boss stammered, slapping him against his forehead. “Bring me Joe! Dead or alive!”
Though disinclined most times to question an order, the hunters seemed unusually discomfited – and quiet.
“You waiting for a price?” Boss asked incredulously. “It’s the Code! And he’s dangerous! A cock-eyed, wild cannon. Lost! Hungry! – Probably scared,” he added as an afterthought.
St. Stephen cautiously stepped forward and whispered, “Boss. It’s Joe. He’s a friend to all.”
“Have you no heart?” Boss groused, waving his pistol about. “I’m saying, as his friends, hunt the bastard down.”
Tapping her scarlet upper lip in a prima donna, scumbag sort of way, Lovely Rita tried to interject again. “But, Boss, he’s KBH.”
Samuels pointed his gun at her and stressed that he felt rather confident that such a point was needlessly clear already, but Rita clarified hers, adding, “What I’m saying – reminding you – is that KBH can’t Quarry or Sheaf other KBH, unless he killed a KBH – which he didn’t. It’s the Code.”
“I’m the Code,” Boss exclaimed, “I’m invoking the Code,” he added and accidentally squeezed off a round through the roof. Just in time, the moon ducked out of the way – zing!
Captain Jack quietly tried to motion to Stephen and Rita with a simple hand gesture across the neck to cut the conversation, but Samuels noticed this and lowered his pistol… in Jack’s direction.
St. Stephen, noting Captain Jack’s sudden reticence, carefully took up the reins: “Your great grandfather made the Code so no KBH would kill another in competition for the same Quarry, but it serves that none of us can Quarry another. Without the Code, our organization would fall into –” (sighing fearfully) – “into…. We’d be lost.”
The thought struck Boss soundly for the moment. Pistol remaining leveled at Jack, he instead squinted and proclaimed, “Then Joe’s no longer a member. It’s official. I strip him of his membership… and anyone who fouls up a Scrub. Starting here.”
Boss’ pistol staring straight at him, Captain Jack flinched, the bottle of lightning rattling uncontrollably in his grip. “But if you Quarry me, Boss, then won’t they have to Quarry you?”
The other hunters nervously rustled, confident that tonight their duty was about to really make for one hell of a bloody kettle of fish if they were to have to uphold the Code by quarrying their employer. Boss seemed unmoved. Or was he frozen in fear?
Lovely Rita stuttered before being able to remind Boss, “The Code says you can’t strip membership from us without a supermajority quorum vote taken three times over three months.”
As his pistol wildly re-aimed itself at her, Boss declared in vulgar terms that the Code would be better off taking it in the backside from an infected boy band.
St. Stephen neared, admitting reluctantly, “The Code orders us to Quarry anyone who breaks it. Anyone…. Boss.”
Samuels radiated skepticism. Staring into the eyes of the hundred-plus bounty hunters who reluctantly sized him up, he gasped! “You’d quarry me? ME? What would you do without me?”
The others averted their eyes. The only sound was of crickets cutting the night with a repetitious song, like that of a countdown. Samuels pondered the terrible issues closely… but then he re-holstered his pistol. Silent breaths of relief whispered into the air. Jack, too, exhaled and wiped the sweat from his bottle.
This was a problem Boss – and maybe no one – had ever considered. If the Code ordered others to kill a fellow KBH, would these others have to be quarried too? There was a domino series about to tumble, and Boss wasn’t sure he was ready for it. Perhaps it was a good thing he hadn’t made his case.
“I appreciate your concern…” Samuels began. “Your loyalty. Your unrelenting, hydraulic adherence to the Code… in this desperate… confusing hour.” Turning from the group, Boss seemed suddenly to grieve, bewailing, “Joe is my tight-bound, dearest friend. The strain of the night, of its events… the corrupt murder of his beloved….”
He paused, unable to finish. Instead, he turned back and admitted, “We’ve counter-steered into a lot of danger for him.”
It was now that the KBH seemed to recognize that tonight’s events had changed their relationship with Joe in a very real, maybe permanent way. They just couldn’t yet tell how.
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