True, the signs were troubled.
After securing the bulls, Little Will and Shiner Pete sat upon the logs of the kraal fence looking down at the town. Packy and the other bullhands had descended the grassy slope and were walking Miira's dusty street to get to their houses. Little Will swallowed against the hard lump in her throat and turned to Pete. "Where do we begin?"
Shiner Pete shielded his eyes against the sun and examined the town. "This is like harness that's been all tossed around and scrambled in a trunk. It just looks like a bunch of hooks and knots; but you can fix it. What you have to do is, one by one, untie each knot, unhook each hook." He pointed his finger at Sunburst Sid's house. "There's where we start."
Dot the Pot Drake sat on a long stone bench in the shade of her house's porch near the kraal. Cookie Jo Wayne, having secured the cookhouse wagon and horses, joined Dot on the bench. After an initial exchange of greetings and news, Cookie Jo pushed her silver-blond hair from her eyes and nodded toward the town. "How are you and Waxy getting on."
"About like dogs'n'cats. You and Packy?"
Cookie Jo sighed and shook her head. "I don't know."
They absent-mindedly watched the heat of Miira's street make the air above it dance. There were the sounds of angry voices coming from Sunburst Sid's place, and Dot raised her eyebrows when she saw Baggage Horse Betty march from Sunburst's door. "Now, will you look at that."
Cookie Jo watched as Sunburst stood in his doorway, calling out to Betty. Betty turned to reply and saw Waxy's "In here sleeps the cheap pope's ex-wife" sign. Picking up the sign, Betty turned abruptly and walked with rapid strides toward Poge Loder's place. Cookie Jo looked at Dot. "What do you suppose is happening?"
Dot the Pot shook her head and watched as Betty leaned the sign next to Poge's door, picked up a rock, and scratched the "ex-" out of the sign's wording. When she was finished, she examined the results of her efforts, then took a deep breath and disappeared into the darkness of Poge's doorway. After a few moments, Poge appeared in the doorway, went to where his "The real pope! ½ price!" sign was hanging and took it down. He turned, read the sign leaning next to his door, picked up the sign, and carried both of the signs indoors. A moment later, Poge ran from the doorway toward Dot's house. As he approached, Dot nodded. "How you doin', Poge?"
The man nodded, ran past the house to the kraal fence, picked up the "Waxy's harem" sign there, then turned and ran back to his own house. Seconds after he had entered it, Poge's door curtain covered the entrance to his house.
Dot leaned back against the front wall of her house. "Now if I was Mootch Movill, I'd say there might be a story in that."
Cookie Jo leaned forward, and a few moments later, Waxy walked from the door of his house. His eyes were confusion capped by a frown. He stood in the sun for a moment, scratched his head, and looked back at his house. Lowering his hand, he rushed to his "The Pope" sign, pulled it from the wall, and threw it inside the house as though the sign embarrassed him. The deed done, Waxy sat down upon a split-stump chair next to his door and stared in the direction of Poge Loder's place.
After a few more moments, Cookie Jo and Dot watched Poge Loder emerge from his doorway at the same time that Waxy got to his feet. Slowly, as though their feet were dragging through winter syrup, the two men approached each other, meeting in the center of the street. The two women could see that the two men were talking, and that it was talk instead of screaming was an event.
Cookie Jo shook her head. "I don't get it. I thought you said those two had been going at it like Arnheim and the Governor."
Dot nodded, observed the two men shake hands, then rubbed her eyes as the two men turned and walked back to their homes. When she opened her eyes she studied the deserted street, heard laughter nearby, and turned her gaze toward the kraal fence. She pointed at Little Will and Shiner Pete. "Now aren't those two just falling all over themselves just a bit?"
Cookie Jo studied the pair and looked back at Dot. "You don't suppose they were working a little of their think-and-do?"
"That's exactly what I suppose. Naughty, naughty."
Cookie Jo lifted her head, studied Packy Dern's house for a moment, then turned to Dot. "I don't imagine that they take requests."
"Hmm." Dot rubbed her chin, looked at Waxy's house, and nodded. "I bet they do." She grinned and looked at Cookie Jo. "If they don't someone who shall remain nameless might just rat on them to Waxy."
The two women stood and headed for the kraal fence.
Waxy sat on his cushion before his low plank table trying to write yesterday's entry in the Miira book. He chewed upon his reed pen for a moment, then tossed the thing down. "I don't understand it." He held his arm out toward the walls of the room. "I do not understand it! I hate that sonofabitch!"
His fist slammed down upon the table. "And there I was, pleasant as you please, standing in the middle of the damned street, in broad daylight, shaking hands—" He shook his head. "Maybe I'm sick."
He looked down at the papers, then swept them from the table with a single stroke of his arm. "Boring! That's what you are! D-e-d deadly dull goddamned paperwork!"
He leaned his back against the wall and looked at Miira's street through his open doorway. "Got half a mind to put my damned sign back up."
A great calm washed over him. He leaned the back of his head against the wall and closed his eyes. The faint sounds of the windjammers pounding out ragtime in the main top began thumping at the insides of his eardrums as the full complement of seventy-five bulls went tail-and-trunk around the hippodrome inside his eyelids. The image singled down to one bull. It was Queenie all decked out in silver sequins for the spectacular. Next to Queenie's left front stood the bullhand, Dorothy Drake, in dark blue sequins, her glossy black hair pinned up from her neck and capped by a long blue plume.
Waxy smiled as he let the vision and the sounds play in his mind. Dorothy turned, kootched along with her pachyderm, displaying her long, shapely legs. Her legs. They were clad in French knit hose—the kind with seams down the back.
"Yum."
She whirled about, and soon Waxy could see nothing but the sequined bullhand in the spotlight. The top of her costume seemed to strain against her ample bosom.
"Damn, but how did she ever get a handle like Dot the Pot?"
She smiled, the scarlet of her lips against the white of her teeth, the rich satin cream of her skin, the sparkling black of her eyes...
... the image wavered, her eyes changed to the color of blue, then back to black, then one was blue and the other black, then both were blue and stayed that way.
He heard a tiny voice. "I told you they were blue."
"I thought they were black," answered another tiny voice.
"Well, you should've checked."
Waxy studied the image, comforted by Dorothy's smile and the continuity of her eye pigmentation.
"Well, I'm glad that's settled." Beautiful blue eyes. And, Great Boolabong, those legs! Those long, lovely, luscious—
Waxy opened his eyes. "I've never even seen the damned show!" He frowned. "I've always been repairing and polishing harness! I've never seen Dot in anything but bullcrap-covered overalls!"
He scratched his head and tried to remember the time. There must have been a time when Dot was in costume. He closed his eyes, and there was Dorothy Drake inside his house. The smells! She was cooking. The cobit bread cut like fine, aged beef filet. Waxy chewed, and by damn it was beef! Dorothy, darling, Dorothy. Where ever did you get beef on Momus? Anything for you, Waxy love.