Whuddayu mean, anythin else, yu vexatious shitepoke, yu aint done nuthin yet! But awright, pard, ifn yu wanta be sociable, yu might hep me shift this ruint ole carkiss inside. I’m jest fryin up out here in thet damn sun.
Shore. He slides down off his gully-backed mount. Where he’s been sitting, he notices, he’s rubbed off whatever they used to whitewash the animal, and a scabious black patch is showing through. The old prospector weighs about what his rags and hair weigh; it’s like picking up a dried beaver pelt or an armload of tumbleweed, his stink being the heaviest thing about him. Has to breathe through his mouth so as not to faint from it. Yu’ve definitely gone off, ole man, he grumbles, turning his head away.
I know it. Caint hep it. It’s why they call me Sweetpea. The man has clapped his raw armbone around his neck to hold on, and it feels like he’s yoked hard to something perilous and dreadful. So whut brung yu out t’this burnt-out shithole, kid? Whut set yer dumb ass on fire?
I dunno. Dont recall. Feel like I always been here.
I know whut yu mean. It’s differnt out here, it aint like other places — in fact it aint a place at all, it’s more like no place. Yu think yu go to it, but it comes to yu and, big as it is, gits inside yu and yu inside it, till yu and it’re purty much the same thing. Aint thet sumthin! A right smarta things happen but they aint no order to em. Yu could be a thousand years older’n me, or younger, no tellin which, and it might be yestidday or tomorra or both at the same time. Y’know whut it is? I’ll tell yu whut it is. It’s a goddam mystery’s whut. Thet how yu see it?
Mebbe. Dont meditate on it much.
Nope, spose not. Sorry about the jabber, son, it’s only all whut I got left. But words aint got nuthin t’do with it, hell, I know thet, it’s doin does the talkin out here in the Terrortory, it’s writ in the lawr sumwhars. But alla thet doin, whar does it go? It feels like the real McCoy but it feels like nuthin, too. Like whut’s in my goddam pockets ifn I still even got pockets. Oh I know why I come out awright, I know whut set my pore butt burnin. Some buggers like livin rough and humpin the natives, and others always hafta try t’make sumthin outa nuthin, but fer me it wuz the plain ole golden legend whut drug me out. I heerd tell they wuz everthin out here a body could want nor even imagine. I heerd they wuz outcroppins a gold twixt trees hanged with chains a precious jewels and rivers a the purest whuskey and fast byootiful wimmen and even the goddam fuckin fountain a youth, and, shoot, I wanted summa thet, who wouldnt? I wanted to be, jest like they tole it t’me, out on the adventurous stage a grand emprise. And y’know whut, son? Lean close now, I aint got much wind left.
Mebbe not, but whut yu got is terrible off-puttin.
I know, it’s why they call me Baby Breath, but lissen, thet’s jest whut it is, see, a stage, I finally figgered it out, a fuckin stage fer tootin yer horn on — crikey, it even looks like one — and the wuss thing is, we all know that afore we even set off. So it aint about gold at all nor land neither nor freedom — hoo! freedom, shit! — nor civvylizin the wilderness and smoothin the heathen encrustations from the savage mind, oh no, hell no! It’s about, lissen t’me now, it’s about style. They aint nuthin else to it. Cept fer the killin, a course, caint even have style without the killin, but thet’s easy, aint nobody caint kill, it’s like eatin and fartin. But dustin em with class, with a bitta spiff’n yer own wrinkle, thet’s one in a million billion. Thet’s the one whut leaves his name behind — his real one or his made-up one, dont matter — but thet name jest sticks like mud’n sucks everbody else up into it, and, son, yu aint gonna git nowhars out here till yu learn thet. Whut I mean t’say is, thet’s mebbe a handsome sombrero yu got pushin yer ears out, but so far’s I kin tell whut’s under it dont amount to a pile a stale horse-poop.
Thanks, ole man, that’s mighty reassurin, specially comin from a stylish gent like yerself. But I aint tryin t’git nowhars.
At the doorway, as if to prove his point, he’s stopped by a skinny long-haired fellow in a black suit and bowler, a photographer by the look of the paraphernalia he’s porting. Dont take the ole coot inside, he says. The light’s piss in thar. I say nuthin about the smell.
He’s dyin. It’s his last wish. And he’s hurtin bad.
Yu dont say. Well it aint gonna matter to him nor nobody else shortly enuf, replies the photographer, with a crooked gold-toothed grin, setting up his gear. Everthin passes, friend, thet’s the good news. Now jest set him on this chair here so’s I kin shoot his disgustin remains fer pasterity wunst he’s finally kicked it.
The old prospector seems to relish the idea of having his photograph taken, even if he won’t be around for the actual event, so he props him up there on the chair the photographer has dragged out of the shot-up shack. Jest lean me sideways, boys, the prospector wheezes, so’s I dont hafta set on thet damn arrow.
The ole fart’s gone all t’hair, the photographer grumbles from under his black hood as he peers through his lens, the greasy black strands of his own hair dangling under the cloth like spiders’ legs. Looks like the ass end of a fuckin porkypine. Fit him out thar with his pick’n pan, why dont yu, make him look half human.
He does so, also loads him up with his antiquated sidearms and sets his slouch hat on square, as the photographer instructs, and then he remounts the swayback mule and prepares to move on. Whut yu need, son, the old codger calls out, is a proper sidekick. He wags his gnawed armbone at him accusingly, or maybe he’s just waving goodbye. It’s about the nakedest thing he’s ever seen. I’da been happy t’oblige but yu come too goddam late!
I know it, he says. Dont seem to of been on time fer nuthin yet. Reckon thet must be my style.
That sets off another fit of cackling and wheezing and dark spewing, a sorry spectacle which he rides away from. The town meanwhile has finally sunk from sight and he is alone once more out on the vast empty desert.
It is dark, another moonless desert night, when he comes at last on the lost posse, locating them not by their campfire or bitter laughter but by the lowing of the vast herd of cattle they have gathered around them, their distant fire flickering in the herd’s depths like the candlelit core of an unstable maze. They’ve filled up the whole prairie with the dumb shuffling beasts; he has to pick his way through thousands of them, trying to avoid their scything horns, egging on his reluctant mount, which is white now only on its underside, away from the weather; it’s like moving through some viscous and muscular sea, shoving against a stubborn tide, though how he even knows about seas and tides, he has no idea. Once among them, he can see nothing else for miles around, and he worries that maybe he’s fated to be rafted here above their pale humped hides forever, or anyway until his raft’s old shanks give way. Gaps open between their flanks, he pushes into them, bumped and jostled from the rear, then pokes and prods with his rifle barrel to pry open new gaps, but his progress is both slow and without sensible direction, that flickering firelight itself now lost to view.
Hlo, sheriff. About fuckin time yu turned up, growls a hollow voice at his back. He bends round in his slope seat, his Winchester across his thighs. The posse’s just behind him, sitting around a roaring campfire by the chuckwagon, smoking, chewing their grub, belching, drinking from mugs and bottles. A gaunt bald-pated scar-faced man, wearing his hat on his back with a cord around his throat, is blowing on an ocarina, making a low wailing noise not unlike the far-off lowing of cattle, which may be all he’s heard all night, except for the sluggish thump and rustle of the chafing bodies. A one-eared mestizo with a crushed bowler and an eyepatch looks up from the old white stick he’s whittling and, the light from the fire lighting up his good eye like a hot coin, asks: Whut kep yu so goddam long?