'Say what?'
'You took over an abandoned building. Just like me.'
'But I belong here.'
'So do I. This town's my home now.' He smiled. 'Well, sir, it's mighty kind of you to come wish me welcome, but I'm afraid I have to be getting to work. So if you'll excuse me?'
But the preacher stood firm, his feet rooted in the puddle of his shadow. His gaunt body was rigid both with an affected dignity and a genuine hangover that was manifest in nicks on his concave cheeks caused by shaving with an unsteady hand. For all the Reverend's stiff aridity, most of his details were liquid: watery eyes laced with angry blood vessels, a wet, drooping lower lip, beads of sweat on his brow, a phlegmy baritone voice decorated with that false tremolo preachers use to lend gravity to the Sacred Word. Even his diction was moist, in part because of the slackness of his mouth, and in part because of the absence of back teeth. Having gained no edge over this young interloper on the issue of residence, he shifted to more familiar ground. 'Tell me, boy. Have you been born again into the ways of righteousness?'
'I can't rightly say. But my ma used to read the Bible every night, if that's any help.'
'The Devil hisself can quote scripture!'
The smell of stale whiskey caused Matthew's stomach to tighten. 'I hope you ain't saying my ma was a devil.'
'What I'm saying is that quoting the Bible don't make a sinner into a saint.'
'You got that right.'
The Reverend scowled. Was that a dig at him?
'But Bible reading sure didn't do my ma much good. She used to say the meek would inherit the earth. But after a lifetime of being meek, the only earth she inherited was a six-foot hole.'
'Don't you dare talk against the Book, boy! It's blasphemy! And blasphemers are damned to twist and scream in rivers of fire!'
'That so?' Matthew looked into the Reverend's hooch-whipped eyes with a chill calm that caused them to flicker uncertainly. 'What about drunkards, Reverend? Are they going to twist and scream too? And what about Bible-pounders who sneak into whorehouses at night? They do much twisting, do they? I know they do their share of screaming, 'cause I heard one of them the other night, stumbling down the street, bawling and blubbering.'
The Reverend's lips compressed. 'You're brewing all kinds of trouble for yourself, boy! Who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind!'
Matthew looked at him long and levelly, then he allowed the Ringo Kid to say on his behalf, 'If there's a storm brewin', mister, you can bet I won't be the only one to get wet.' With which, the Ringo Kid turned on his heel and walked away, his gait loose and confident, although an uneasy Matthew could feel the Reverend's eyes boring into his back.
As he approached the Traveller's Welcome to start making breakfast, he felt himself emerging from the Other Place. Weight returned to his legs, and objects around him began to lose their smeared halos of light. He drew in long breaths of cool morning air to dilute the angry acid that was etching into his stomach, like it used to every time he was obliged to face up to bullies at a new school.
He knew he had made an enemy of the Reverend, and he knew that wasn't smart, because experience had taught him that the best way to manage people was to keep them buttered up and off balance with his special blend of joshing and sudden sincerity.
… But that smell of whiskey on his breath!
Tie Siding, Wyoming
THERE WAS A TRICKLE of drool at the corner of the old man's mouth because a recent stroke had left him with a slack lower lip and one drooping eyelid.
The biggest of the intruders, the one with the bullet-shaped head that sprang neckless from his shoulders, and the lips that were permanently drawn into a tight little pucker, sat at the at the old man's table, ripping chunks off the loaf of sourdough bread and dipping them into the honey pot, then wedging them into his mouth. As he chewed, he hummed with infantile pleasure, and this seemed to annoy the second intruder, a diminutive barrel- chested man who kept watch on the street from behind the lace curtains.
The old man searched the pale gray eyes of the third intruder, who sat patiently before him, his fingers toying absently with the slide of his braided leather lanyard. Why had these men pushed their way into his snug little house? Who were they?
'Oh, come on now, Mr. Ballard,' the gray-eyed one said. 'Think back! I cannot believe you don't remember me, 'cause I remember you. Oh, I remember you very well indeed. I even remember those fancy waistcoats you always wore.' He reached over and felt the silky lapel of the old man's green-and-gold brocade waistcoat between the pads of his fingertips. 'I am sorely pained to see you so crippled up, Mr. Ballard. May I have that, please?' He took the old man's cane from between his knees. 'For weeks now me and my followers have been hiding in ditches and barns, while men with guns searched everywhere for us. And all that time I dreamed of catching up with you in your schoolhouse, after everyone had gone home. Just you and me, all alone. Like when you used to keep me after school.'
'You were one of my pupils?' Mr. Ballard asked, his numb lip making the p's puffy.
'There you go! Now let's see if you can come up with my name. Think back. Think back.'
But over the years, Mr. Ballard had taught so many children in his one-room school in Tie Siding, a town that had sprung from the red dirt of the Wyoming/Colorado border to provide the Union Pacific railroad with the pitch- soaked ties it needed in its land-grabbing race against the Central Pacific. It wasn't long before ancient high plateau pine forests were plundered to extinction, and the town rapidly declined from its zenith when it had boasted two general stores, three hotels, a post office, the biggest saloon south of Laramie, and a stone jail, the only stone building in this town of wood. Of all this, there remained only one store whose keeper doubled as postmistress. By the time Mr. Ballard had his stroke, only a dozen students were left at the school, so few that his place could be taken by a recent widow who had once been his pet student, and who now combined her teaching duties with the task of bringing him meals and keeping his clothes clean and tidy. Mr. Ballard frowned and pressed his fingers to his lips in an effort to envision which of the half-forgotten parade of little boys that had passed through his school could have grown into this man with the dead, ice-gray eyes. His fingertips felt the drool that his lips were unable to feel, and he wiped it away with a little shudder of disgust. He had always been meticulous about his dress and his diction, and the effects of his stroke on both these carefully cultivated social attainments caused him intense embarrassment. 'I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't remember you.'
'Oh, now, please try real hard to think, Mr. Ballard,' the pale-eyed intruder implored. Then he suddenly smashed the tabletop with the cane. 'Think back, goddamn it!'
This eruption of violence brought a sudden epiphany of recognition, and Mr. Ballard's left eye widened in terror.
Lieder grinned. 'Ah, now you remember! I can see it in your eyes. Well… in the one eye, anyway. Yes, it's that no-account Lieder kid, back like a biblical scourge! You thought you'd seen the last of me when you had me dragged off to that home for wayward boys, didn't you? Didn't you, Mr. Ballard? But you didn't reckon on this force I read about in a book. Karma. And what Karma means is this: As you dish it out, so will you get it crammed down your own throat, sooner or later! And you sure could dish it out, Mr. Ballard. Oh, Lord how you could dish it out! For some reason, you set yourself against me from the first day I came to your school.'
'I doubt that I set-'
'You set yourself against me! I was a smart kid, and I had questions to ask. But you set yourself against me. Do you remember that first day?'
'I've had so many pupils. I can't remember any one particular-'
'Oh, you're going to remember. Don't you worry about that, Mr. Ballard. I've risked my neck just to jolt your memory. I've come back to this one-dog town, when I knew they might be waiting to drag me back to prison.'
'… I really don't-'
'The first day I came to school, I tried to let you know that I was smart and worthy of your attention and praise. I raised my hand time after time, but you only called on your pets. Then when you were telling the class about Indians, I leant over and whispered to a boy about how I'd once seen a Indian with a patent medicine huckster, and I described how he'd done the Rain Dance right there in front of the Price Hotel. You slammed that
