IGMS Issue 17 (13 page)

"Who might you be, Miss?" he said.

"Why that matters to whoever you are, I don't know," Nellie told him. "Incidentally, that is the greenest suit I've ever seen on a man."

Sweetie stared at her, but she didn't look away.

"I'm proprietor here," he finally said. "I noticed your pad and pen, and wondered what you might be jotting down, here on my premises?"

"It is my pastime to study local attractions, as I travel, and Susanna is being so kind as to tell me about Duster's phosphate mines, which I find fascinating," Nellie said. "Perhaps you and I could talk about that subject, at your convenience?"

Again he regarded her, and I could almost see gears in Sweetie's head turning.

"Alas, business presses," he said. "In any event, I expect you'll be traveling on directly because . . ."

He never finished that thought, probably what is termed a "veiled threat," because just then his brother, Placido Hieronymus, came in through the swinging doors and, seeing Sweetie, let out a sort of bleat. His face turned as red as his messy hairand his raggedy mustache, and he waddled over -- he and Sweetie shared red hair, but nothing else, Sweetie's proportions snakelike, Placido a lard bag.

"You'll be sorry!" Placido said, putting his red face close to Sweetie's and trying to glower.

Sweetie regarded his brother as if he were a fly in the soup.

"There's your lovey-dovey," Sweetie sneered, pointing at my mother, just then starting up the stairs with her bagged lunch. "Go sit in her lap and don't trouble yourself with big-boy things."

Placido's eyes swam, maybe because of his allergies, but also because eyes reveal the inner person, and Placido's insides consisted of whiny self-pity mixed with petulance, along with a sense of grievance, and it all made him prone to tear up. I'd certainly heard enough of it all to know what I'm talking about. At any rate, his face got redder and redder, because he wanted to say something to cut Sweetie to the core, but he couldn't think of anything. So he partially showed his hand.

"I've got a party coming who'll fry your beans!" he finally sputtered.

Sweetie's cobra eyes chilled, and I could see he was considering what sort of nuisance Placido had planned. Then his face turned even meaner than usual, because he did not like being crossed.

He pointed across the room at my mother. On her way upstairs, she had stopped on the landing to view the fraternal argument.

"I'll be visiting you later, Dearie," Sweetie hissed at her, loud enough for everyone in the saloon to hear him.

That dropped Placido's jaw, since he paid my mother to be his personal companion, and he stood gulping at Sweetie. I was upset, too. Actually I was so sick in my stomach that I shouted at Sweetie: "Do you ever do one decent thing?" That was a mistake on my part, because Sweetie, as I mentioned, didn't like being crossed or defied. He stared at me with those snake eyes, which seemed to have fumes inside them.

"Higher fees -- that's what young ones bring," he hissed, looking me up and down. "Not quite ripe yet, but next year? And I'll be first, Missy."

I did not cry. What I did was Divert, which is a technique I invented for dealing with woe: you simply forget the woe exists by focusing on Precise Observation. For instance, I noted that Frankie had turned her smoked glasses toward Sweetie, but also past Sweetie, at the sheriff and deputies standing on either side of the door. Johnny leaned back in his chair, enjoying the show. He even got in a wink at Nellie Bly, but she hardly noticed because she had her pad in her lap, hidden under the tabletop, and she rapidly jotted notes, suppressing jubilation over her windfall of excellent grist.

I posed this question to myself, to ponder later: does a journalist's participation in life consist solely in reporting on it?

Placido finally spoke.

"You'll be sorry!" he told Sweetie, returning to his original theme, and he poked Sweetie's skinny chest with his fat finger.

Sweetie looked down at the finger with revulsion. Then he glanced over at Fitzpatrick Duprey, leaning against the wall, and barely nodded.

Without hurrying, the sheriff straightened and walked toward Placido, who had his back turned and did not see him coming. Fitzpatrick Duprey had a wiry black mustache and always wore a black suit, today over a red vest embroidered in gold. He habitually sneered, one side of his mouth drawn up, and right now his sneer looked more awful than usual. But all he did, at first, was rest one long-fingered hand on Placido Hieronymus's shoulder.

Placido turned, and his red face whitened.

"Call him off," he told Sweetie.

But his brother only smiled and said: "You've been naughty again, Placido -- remember how that irritated Mother so profoundly?"

Then he nodded at Sheriff Duprey. I saw Duprey raise his eyebrows, a silent question. Sweetie considered. Then he shook his head.

"Just a little discipline," he told the sheriff. "No more."

Duprey grinned. He stepped back, regarding Placido, deciding what to do to him, and I actually felt almost badly for that sorry sniveler, because I saw his legs shake. He tried to leave, but Fitzpatrick Duprey put his hand back on his shoulder and held him. Now the sheriff began to mumble silently to himself, pointing his free hand's long, bony index finger.

Placido, suddenly, stood in the middle of the saloon wearing only his shoes and argyle socks, held up with garters. Otherwise, he was starkers, looking like a fat groundhog with its pelt shaved off.

Placido bleated, then ran up the stairs with his huge buttocks jiggling. Most everybody in the saloon laughed, except for Sweetie, who already was on his way out, and Nellie Bly -- who jotted notes furiously -- and Fitzpatrick Duprey, who stood staring across the room, looking at the table where Frankie and Johnny sat, as if he were sniffing the air, catching a scent.

Johnny, seeing the sheriff looking at him, straightened up and clasped his hands, like a good little boy in school. Frankie, expressionless, seemed to look everywhere and nowhere from behind her smoked glasses.

Abruptly, frowning, the sheriff strode out of the saloon, jerking his chin at his three deputies to follow. Once they were gone, the saloon hummed again, everybody chortling over how humiliated Placido had looked.

I bolted from the table and ran upstairs to tell my mother: we'll pack and go! Even if we have to walk all the way to Tampa or Jacksonville!

But when I got to the top floor -- where Marigold had her quarters, along with the hotel's other working women -- and I pushed open the door, there sat Placido on a hassock, a bath towel wrapped around his blubbery belly and hippopotamus behind, sniveling. My mother sat beside him in her chair, stroking his hair.

Woe overcame me, and I meant to hurry away. But somebody knocked on the door. It's Johnny Duncan, I thought. He's come to announce his true identity and begin his mission of bringing down Sweetie Hieronymus. Of course, it was not Johnny.

"I'm Payne," she told Placido.

He looked at her stupidly.

"I thought . . ."

"Juno Frankie Payne," she said. "A thousand each for the three deputies, and two-thousand for Duprey."

"Too much!" Placido said. "I couldn't . . ."

Frankie shrugged and started out the door. She had it opened when Placido cried out: "I'll pay -- out of the pittance my mother left me!"

"Go do it now," he told her, "and then we'll force Sweetie to make me his vice president."

"A thousand more for that," Frankie said.

I thought Placido might faint. But he nodded, with his eyes shut against the fiscal trauma, and Frankie shrugged again and walked out the door.

After that, I shot out of my mother's room and down the stairs, to see the action.

In the saloon, Johnny had now moved to Nellie Bly's table, leaning towards her to talk, making moony eyes. Nellie ignored him, still furiously jotting notes.

Johnny suddenly hushed and looked up. On the landing stood Frankie, staring at him.

She still wore her smoked glasses. But now she had on black leather trousers and a leather jacket, also black. She took in Johnny and Nellie Bly, her blank face scary.

"Hey there," Johnny said, with a canary feathers look. "I was just asking Miss Bly if she knew. . ."

But he trailed off, as if Frankie's stare wilted him.

"Go to the sheriff's office," Frankie told him. "Tell them they can live if they leave Duster right now. Say I said so."

Johnny probably didn't want to cross Frankie just then. I could see him biting his lip, with those sky-blue eyes darting around, as if her were looking for an exit.

"Frankie, you know they'll just shoot me or something," he said. "Why give them an out anyway?"

"It's the code," Frankie said. "Like being true, you know?"

Johnny sat looking down at the table, miserable. It was disgusting.

"I'll go," I told Frankie. "They won't shoot a little girl."

So I went.

When I got there, the three deputies were playing poker and Fitzpatrick Duprey sat with his shoes up on his desk watching them, but looking distracted.

"Get out of Duster right now," I told them. "J. F. Payne says she'll kill you all."

Those deputies laughed.

I called them Big, Medium, and Small, because of their different proportions. But, to a man, they were mad-dog nasty. Small unholstered his revolver and aimed it at me, pretending to shoot, after which he blew away imaginary smoke from the barrel. They argued over what to do with me, such as fricasseeing me like a capon and sending me back to J. F. Payne on a crockery platter.

"Shut up," Fitzpatrick Duprey told them.

He stood up and looked out the window.

"You don't know what we're up against," he said.

J.F. Payne, he told them, had taken out top gunslingers all the way from Evansville, Indiana, to Santa Fe. No spellslinger ever survived her, either. In Chicago, she even turned the O'Ditherty gang's powerful Hiram Glott into ashes and smoke before he got past his strongest spell's second syllable.

Big, Medium, and Small took that in. Big finally snorted.

"We're four, she's one," he said. "And we're quick -- while she's muttering her spell,
bang, bang, bang!"

Fitzpatrick Duprey looked at the ceiling and silently sighed.

"Besides, you can take her, can't you, Fitz?" said Medium. "You ain't afraid of her, are you?"

Sheriff Duprey looked out the window. But then he turned, grinning, the evilest grin I'll ever see. He opened his desk's drawer and pulled out a long wooden case.

"This cost me plenty in Macao," he said. "I've saved it for something like this."

From the case, he extracted a long, thin ivory wand, with golden Chinese characters inscribed along its white length. He held it up between his right hand's thumb and forefinger.

"Casting spells bare handed, that's like shooting a derringer," he said. "This wand's a cannon."

Then he told them, "Let's go get her, boys."

I burst out of there and ran back to the Ascending Angel, where I found Frankie in her black leather suit standing on the street in front of the hotel's porch, with no expression at all on her face. Gasping after my run, I told her everything.

"He says it's like a cannon," I told her.

I couldn't see her eyes behind those smoked glasses, but I could tell she looked back at the Ascending Angel. Most of the patrons peered out the windows, their faces pressing against the glass, on all three stories. A few braver people stood on the porch. And right in the doorway stood Nellie Bly with her pad, jotting. Johnny Duncan came up behind her, and I saw him put his hands on her shoulders and whisper in her ear. I just knew what he thought: Frankie would die, and Nellie would be his new love.

Nellie didn't even notice him at first, she scribbled so furiously. But then she frowned and stepped away, giving Johnny a severe look over her shoulder, which inspired him to wink. I could see that Frankie saw it all.

"Go inside," Frankie told me.

But I only stepped back a few paces, meaning not to miss a single thing, and I watched Frankie walk across the street to stand with her back against the corral of the Okie Livery Stables, founded by Pete the Okie, who came to Duster to escape those awful Oklahoma winters and an overbearing uncle. No horses were in the corral just then, which gladdened me, because I could not bear hearing a bullet-struck horse whinny in pain.

I hoped the sheriff and his crew had yellowed out and left town. But then I saw Fitzpatrick Duprey walking up the street, the heat shimmering the air around him. It looked as if he meant to man up and face Frankie alone. But then Big stepped out of the alley beside the Ascending Angel and leaned against the building, pretending to study his fingernails. Next, I saw Medium peering down from the roof of the Duster General Store, holding a repeating rifle. And then, on the far side of the corral from where Frankie stood, with her back turned, Small peeped over the railing, then ducked down.

I ran across the street and told Frankie they had Small at her back.

"You go inside now," she said.

I went no farther than the hotel's porch, standing beside Nellie Bly, to witness what would happen and feeling contrite because, at a moment of temporary infatuation with a shameless masher, I had called Frankie a "clot" and "donkey." Seeing her standing by that corral, all alone, I felt remorseful indeed.

Taking his time, Fitzpatrick Duprey eased up the street, wearing a new suit for the occasion -- white, with a white shirt, and a white sombrero, and white shoes, and a turquoise bolo tie. He finally stopped just far enough down the street that he had to shout a little.

"Hey there, Frankie, no bonnet!" he said. "You'll get sunburned!"

From the alley alongside the hotel, Big yelled out: "Hey, little lady, where's your parasol?"

Up on the store roof, Medium peered down, wanting to get in a jibe, too, trying to think up a good one, and finally telling her: "Say, wearing those trousers like that, I can see your butt!"

Small kept hidden behind the corral. Frankie, standing there silent, looked awfully small to me, and alone. None of them spoke now, all waiting. I could not tell where Frankie looked, because of her smoked glasses. Then my throat tightened -- behind the Okie Corral, where he hid, Small rose up and rested a carbine on the top rail and aimed at the back of Frankie's head. I ran out into the street.