When I whut—?
Course, bein so recently widdered, I hadta think about it fer a minnit or two—
Belle! We aint hitched—?!
Well not yet, darlin, but the preacher’s due here any second. I bought myself some special underbritches fer the occasion yu’re jest gonna love. I’d show em to yu, but it’s bad luck t’see yer bride’s—
But, Belle, I caint do thet! It — it — whut kin I say? — it dont go with the job!
Fiddlesticks. I’ll git yu a new job. Yu kin play the pianner.
I dont know how t’play the pianner.
I’ll larn yu.
I dont wanta be larnt. She brings her ruby-tipped breasts over for him to kiss. He turns his head away. Belle, dammit, this aint right, I jest aint the settlin-down kind.
Yu’ll git used to it, lovey. Anyways it’s too late, yu done promised.
But yu said yerself I wuznt right in the haid.
Dont matter none, promise is a promise. Breakin one mebbe aint a capital offense around here, but the punishment fer it aint a purty thing t’watch. She leans over him and tickles his ear with one of her painted nipples. Now c’mon, handsome, give em a little smack. From now on, they’re all yer’n. Or mostly all yer’n.
There’s a rap at the door. It’s open! shouts Belle, still bent over him with a pap in his ear, and in comes a lanky bald man with a goatee, one eye sewed shut by an ugly scar, a monocle in the other, bowler and Bible clasped at his crotch, and his collar turned backwards. Howdy do, dear friends, he says. I’m here t’hack up the connubial rites.
We’re nearly almost ready, revrend, soon’s I’ve smeared on my fixins.
Other townsfolk crowd in through the doorway. Hey, Belle! We decked it all out like yu ast! It’s lookin wondrous conjugular down thar!
Thanks, boys! They’s heaps a vittles, and the drinks’re on me’n the sheriff t’day! I need a pair a yu t’hep me git my dearly betrothed down thar as he aint too ambulatory, but the resta yu kin go down and git started!
Yippee! they shout, throwing their hats in the air and clattering back down the stairs, the preacher whooping right along with them.
A squint-eyed old fellow with a foot-long beard and a pegleg stays behind with a thinly mustachioed rustic in a crumpled tophat, and while Belle goes back to her dressing table to pin the ruby in her cheek, they come over to haul him out of the bed.
Now wait up, fellers, I think we should probly oughter hole off jest a bit, he says. I caint even stand proper yet.
Thet’s jest cuz yu’re nervous, sheriff, says the top-hatted oaf as they drag him out from under the quilts and coverlets. The fellow has one arm in a sling or else not there at all, and his thread of a mustache, he sees, is branded on. Everbody’s nervous on his weddin day.
Belle, I know yu’re wantin t’git right at it, says the pegleg, but shouldnt he have some pants on? Anyhow leastways fer the cerymonies? He’s desprit unsightly down thar, it kinder turns my stomach.
I aint finished patchin em up, says the chanteuse, wiggling her hips into a velvet and silk wedding gown. And they stink purty bad. He’ll hafta go like he is.
Well aint yu at least got a ole skirt or sumthin t’hide him in?
I aint wearin no skirt, he says flatly.
And I aint marryin no cowboy in one neither, says Belle, buttoning up.
Awright, gimme it then, he says. I’ll wear it.
How about yer ole pink bloomers, Belle? Them ole-fashion long-laigged ones with the gap in the back?
Shore. Dont know ifn they’re clean or not, but they’re backa the dressin screen. They dump him back on the bed and the old-timer clumps over there, his pegleg hammering the wooden floor as if trying to split the boards.
The one-armed yokel goes to help Belle with her buttons, so he pulls himself to the edge of the bed, intending to throw himself off. Can’t crawl very far, sore as he is, but he figures he just might make it to the open window and take his chances out it.
He figures wrong. Whoa thar, sheriff, says the lout with the branded lip, and he strolls back casually and with his single arm flips him over and ropes his wrists behind his back all in one easy motion. No need t’git all ramparageous. Tyin the knot aint the end a the world.
The old graybeard comes thumping back, and though he twists and kicks and bucks, they succeed in fitting him out in Belle’s glossy drawers, tight as they are on him, the old fellow holding him down while the younger one ties up the little ribbons at the knees into bows. Haw! Aint he cute!
Yu got them things on him fore t’aft, deppity, remarks the chanteuse, flouncing the ruffles on her gown. His bizness is hangin out.
They wouldnt go on tother way, Belle. We’da hadta shove his doodads up inside him. But it’s awright. Saves time later on.
Yu my deppity? he asks the peglegged oldtimer.
Shore, sheriff, he says, buckling the gunbelt around his middle, while the other fellow works his boots on him. Dont yu reckanize me?
He had a rough time out thar on the desert.
Musta done.
Okay, port him on down, boys, I’m ready’n rarin!
Wait a minnit! Ifn yu’re my deppity, I got a order t’give yu—
Later, sheriff, grimaces the old man, tobacco juice leaking down his beard like a muddy creek, and they plant his white hat on him and lift him by his armpits off the bed and on out the door. Right now the party’s bilin up’n I’m dry as a dry desert bone.
As they drag him out onto the landing, they are met with a jubilant roar from the wedding guests below, followed by a piano roll, bottle banging, and shouted commentary, punctuated by loud whistling, on his marriage costume. His deputy reaches up and doffs his hat for him. The saloon is decorated entirely in white with pale streamers made from bleached rags and catalog paper looping from beam to beam, gauzy muslin festoons over the windows, bar, and swinging doors, white paper flowers on all the gambling tables, an ejaculatory scatter of white poker chips, and, hanging from the streamers, beams, and festoons, hundreds upon hundreds of tinkling white sticks, which he discovers upon being bumped by a few on his way down the stairs to be bones, whittled into the shapes of people and animals, mostly in copulating postures. Even the spittoons have been whitewashed for the occasion. Over behind the snow-white grand piano, leg and arm bones have been log-cabined into an arch around the big wheel of fortune, turning it into a kind of wedding altar, with the pooltable ROUND BALLS AND STRAIGHT CUES! sign tacked up inside and finer bones carved to resemble privy body parts dangling like a fringe from the top of the arch.
His presumed bride, her breasts on view and looking radiant, is passing among her guests, collecting hugs and kisses, compliments, bottom slaps and pinches, shots of whiskey, and well-wishes of the generally suggestive sort, as well as pouches of gold dust, which she stuffs down her bosom. Wedding gifts, he assumes, or else winnings from a bet, no doubt the one he’s lost, a remark he makes to his deputy, who says: Naw, sheriff. Haw. It’s fer yer weddin night. She’s chargin admission.
They aint gonna be nuthin t’see, he grumps, and the deputy laughs at that, showing the gaps in his tobacco-stained teeth.
She did tell us it might be sumthin of a skin game, he says.
This un’s fer yu, darlin! calls out the chanteuse, perching herself knees-up on the piano, whereupon the piano player, an earless pipe-smoking mestizo in white pajamas, strikes up a tune, and she sings him a love song about busting an unbustable bronc, the men who have hoisted him down here holding him up in front of the exuberant assembly in his buckskin shirt and gaping pink bloomers like an illustration. Not of an unbustable bronc — he’s shriveled up with pain and chagrin, his wrists are still bound, his legs leaden and useless, his heart’s in his boots — but of the unsavory consequences of excess civilizing. After that excitement, the preacher sets his bowler on his bald head, bangs his Bible on the bar, and calls them all forward to the tall wheel of fortune: Brang some chairs and take yer seats, gents! The blessed cerymonies is about t’commensurate!