Unbury Carol(68)

The old man asked for the books and Moxie removed the considerable string that kept them together in a stack and put the string in his pocket. I said the books looked fine in the sunlight but before the man had a chance to agree all three of us done heard a lady hollering down the alley. We turned and saw she was on the ground, and a man was above her, kicking her in her neck. He had other men with him and they stood and watched and Moxie and I could tell it was a whore there on the ground and something clicked in Moxie and I still don’ know exactly what it was.

I said, ‘Hold on there, Jimmy,’ but he was already crossing the dirt alley, calling for them to get off the lady. The men turned and one said, ‘This ain’t your business,’ and Moxie done knocked him out. Now, I seen some hits and I seen some poor hits thrown by Moxie himself, but this one was square. This one broke teeth. I was beside Moxie now as the other men turned and I took him by the arm, telling him we oughtta get, that we didn’t know nothing about these men. Like I done said before, the outlaw recognizes the outlaw, and I had little doubts these were the blackhearted sort.

The one who had been kicking the lady came forth and told Moxie he was gonna kill him right here if he didn’t get gone and Moxie asked him to do it. The man smiled and I guess he had some real trouble on his hands ’cause he told Moxie there’d be a duel, in an hour, at the far empty end of Dunkle Street, instead of shooting Jimmy as he said he would. Moxie said Dunkle Street was a long street. The man told Jimmy there was work being done, a great rectangle of a hole in the road, men putting in a pipe. He told Jimmy they could stand at either end. ‘It looks something like a grave,’ he said, ‘which ought to make your trip all the faster.’ ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Moxie said. ‘I try to be kind,’ the man answered. ‘And let me introduce myself,’ the man said, ‘I’m Daniel Prouds, I think it important you know the name of the man who kills you.’ Moxie held his gaze cold and said ‘My name is James Moxie’ in return.

Oh, this man Prouds was the classic pig-shit-eating gentleman-outlaw. He wore the watch chain and purple vest and fine pressed pink shirt beneath. He had a black mustache and black hair that came out from under his old white hat. White gloves stained with the struggle he’d had with the lady. Black boots that shone in the sunlight. A finer-dressed outlaw would’ve been hard to find and almost always them type’s the pig-shitters.

‘We best be going,’ I told Moxie as we left the old man with the loose books and stepped back into the bar. But Moxie wasn’t having it. Not that day. I done told him he done never been in a duel and he said I was right. I asked him ain’t you worried and he answered yes. But he weren’t having us leaving town and I started thinking of life alone on the Trail. It was a long hour I say.

And in that hour people talked. Word traveled that two men were gonna have a shootout and one of them was Daniel Prouds and one of them was an out-of-towner who done stuck his nose in Prouds’s business. Moxie told me he needed some time to think. I told him he needed some time to practice. He got up and left me there at the bar and I guess it was either on the walk he took or right then before it that the idea hit him.

The idea that would transcend the Trail.

I don’ know who the locals were rooting for ’cause Prouds wasn’t a liked man about town but Moxie was in the wrong as far as they could tell. A few knew I’d been riding with the dead-man-to-be and treated me as such. A small cathouse custodian named Rinaldo asked if I thought Jimmy had a chance and I told him I’d be shocked if Moxie didn’t win it. And that’s how I handled it. I did my part, pretending Moxie was the best unknown gun they’d never seen. But I was full of shudders by then, truth be told, and no longer worried myself o’er how to pay for the beers we’d drank.

Moxie returned just before the hour was up and sat beside me at the bar.

‘People are talking,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘They say he’s good, Jimmy.’

‘Uh-huh.’

We waited without talking the last ten minutes of that hour and I swear it that the place went respectfully silent when the two of us rose and walked through the tables. It was funereal, it was. And funereal is a word that ought to only be used near death.

I asked a man which direction the work was being done on the road. Jimmy told me he knew where it was. ‘You went and saw it?’ I asked him. ‘Sure I did,’ he said. Well, I figured that wasn’t gonna help us any and we walked the long boardwalk like we would the plank. My heart was ticklish it was beating so irregular and I asked Jimmy a couple more times if he was certain before I just shut up, not wanting to mess him up. ‘Make sure I get the side with sun in my eyes,’ he said. Hell’s heaven, I thought, that sure didn’t sound like a man who shot a duel before. But Jimmy insisted.

There was already a good crowd when we showed up and I saw some of the people looking at Jimmy and sizing him up, saying So this is him. I can’ tell you if anybody else could see it but I knew my good friend was scared. I don’t think I ever seen him exactly like it before. His eyes were polar white and he talked in clipped, half words. I seen sweat coming down the brim of his hat. He was looking out at that hole in the road…that rectangle that did look like an exaggerated grave after all.

Oh, the ominous stuff was out that day.

A man that was neither Prouds nor Moxie suddenly called for the men to come forward and so they did.