The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Lie slipped into the hallway, one hand on the wall, one hand holding the carpetbag. Swaying on her tiny feet, but moving forward. Gritting her teeth against pain that sliced and stabbed. Searching for a way out of the house other than the front door.

There were many rooms in the white goblin’s house. Too many. Like a Chinese palace where the rooms connected in almost impossible ways, designed by crafty architects who hoped to trap an eternity of luck.

Somewhere far behind her, she heard the front door opening. Then she heard the white goblin’s voice. “Those boots your nigger is wearing,” he said, and Lie heard his footsteps whispering over the Indian carpet in the main room, his boot heels ringing on the hardwood hallway that led to the bedroom. “I like the goddamn things. I really like ’em.” She listened as the bedroom door squealed open on dry hinges. “I want you to come outside with me, show me how he takes ’em off without getting his fingers chewed down to the nub — ”

The white goblin’s footfalls stopped suddenly. Lie could imagine the twisted expression on his face, his anger boiling as he realized that she was not in the bedroom.

His voice was like thunder. “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!”

She stumbled down the hallway, searching for an exit, each step agony. Behind her, heavy footsteps shook the house. Still, she did not slow her pace. Not until the white goblin himself turned a sharp corner. Not until his great shadow covered her like a shroud.

He made a grab for the carpetbag, but Lie refused to surrender easily. She forced him to fight for it. He had to pry it from her hand, finger by finger.

His free hand closed around her neck. “I paid for you!” he shouted. “You’re my property! Lock, stock, and barrel! That’s the deal!”

He raised his hand, almost slapped her.

She could not decide why he did not.

A great sigh escaped him. “Goddamn me for giving you my heart,” he said. His eyes filled with poison as he spoke, and she wished that he would have slapped her instead.

“Get back to the bedroom,” he ordered. “Our bedroom. Get into that white dress. The one I had made special. Under the bed, in a pink box, you’ll find some little white booties to go with it. They’ve got pearls on ’em. I ordered ’em special from Chicago, from an outfit makes baby booties and such for rich folks. Get into those, too.”

She only stared at him.

“I know you understand me,” he said, marching down the hallway, tossing the carpetbag into a room with a doorway so small it might as well not have been there at all.

The white goblin turned a corner.

All that remained was the sound of his footsteps.

The creak of the front door.

A door he did not have to slam.

Midas stood on the porch, staring up at the sky

The heavens had gone all angry with the sunset, violet sky warring with black-fisted clouds that hooked and uppercutted against the wind, the sun sinking down slow and easy and kind of timid, like it was plumb worn out and didn’t have much of a notion to do anything about it.

At his feet were buckets of beer and whiskey bottles by the dozen. To his side stood a player piano from a whorehouse in Fiddler proper, borrowed especially for the grand occasion. Overhead, paper lanterns swayed from the eaves of the Gerlach homestead. The lanterns glowed just as red as red could be, painted with Chi-nee characters that symbolized happiness and love, and not just your everyday garden-variety happiness and love, but happiness and love of the eternal variety.

Midas spit over the rail, into the dust.

Fifty feet straight on waited several rows of long tables covered over with red-and-white checkerboard tableclothes, each one set with china plates and real silver utensils, each one ready with more buckets of beer and whiskey bottles by the dozen. Beyond the tables was a cooking pit, dug down but not too deep, heaped with good oak that had long since burned down to a serious bed of coals. Midas’ men had borrowed a couple of jailhouse doors from the sheriff’s lockup in Fiddler, and with these they had covered over the pit. Several dead hogs kept company with a couple dead cows and a few dead lambs there on the bars, each carcass roasting to black perfection. The smell was all blood and iron, and it made Midas’ head swim.

“Boss? You okay? Can you hear me, boss?”

Midas blinked several times, glancing down. The buck bounty man stood at the foot of the porch steps, still smiling as proud as proud could be even though a half-dozen guns were aimed at his nappy head.

Midas grinned himself, figuring that this stranger must have had one hell of a smoke wagon hanging between his legs to be kicking up the sand at this late date.

“What you want us to do with this here nigger, Mr. Gerlach?”

The grin went soft on Midas’ face. He actually started to shake, because somehow he knew that this uppity grinnin’ buck was responsible for ruining everything.

Sure. That was the way it was. The buck had been the burr under his saddle, all along. It was the buck’s fault that the Chinaman’s daughter had been disobedient. That had to be it… there was nothing in the Chinaman’s letters to explain it otherwise. The buck must have put ideas into her poor little head, convincing her to steal from her husband-to-be.

Yeah. The buck had hatched the whole scheme.

And that wasn’t the only damage he’d done. It was the stranger’s fault that Midas’ own men were now staring at him with snickering little grins branded on their faces, just as it was the stranger’s fault that Midas Gerlach was standing before them, shaking like a sissified gent. Standing there on his own front porch, on his wedding day, his big ol’ puppy-dog of a heart breaking with the knowledge that the bloom was off the fucking rose.

Forever more. Amen.

Without warning, Midas erupted. A torrent of words gushed over his lips. He shouted about blood and honor and true love and outre oriental practices, and he couldn’t seem to put a cork in it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t rein in a single syllable. He took great solace in the fact that a gun was in his hand, for he was certain that he was going to use it in just a minute or maybe less, and then he would surely shut up. But there were some things that needed saying before he sent this buck straight to hell.

Innumerable things. And Midas was saying each and every one of them, though his brain didn’t have one damn thing to do with it. The words were bubbling up direct from his guts, and he couldn’t control them any more than a holy roller can control himself when he’s caught up in the spirit and chattering in tongues. The words were jumping and leapfrogging and somersaulting right on out of Midas’ mouth — each and every one of them racing hellbent for the ears of his audience — but at the same time they were filling him up, too, filling him so full that he was sure to bust if he didn’t pretty quickly cock the hammer and let fly with an avalanche of lead.

Midas looked away, just for a second, just to catch his breath.

And there she was. A real vision. Standing in the doorway, all white like the pearly gates of God’s own heaven. The Chinaman’s daughter was wearing the wedding gown Midas had bought for her, waiting there beneath the red paper lanterns that glowed with promised happiness and love of the eternal variety.

She wore pearl booties on her pretty little feet — those delicate booties that had come all the way from Chicago — the booties Midas had hidden under his stinking bed like a well-kept promise.

The Chinaman’s daughter held out one dainty hand to him, her beautiful fingers painted red by glowing