Explanations

Day 1: The Old Days

So these stories are going to be longer and more ambitious than the horror stories. And hopefully of a slightly higher quality. But no promises. Due to their length, I'll be more forgiving if you decide to just not read em. But I'll cry. See, look, tears. And Bi Bek A, these won't be horror, so you have no excuses this time.

            Jack Kane sat on his porch, the one he built with his own two hands and rocked, forward, back, matching the rhythm of the man speakin’ in front of him. And Johnny Tappet was a man who enjoyed speakin’, as Jack Kane was finding out. Tappet stood the whole time, taking care not to get Arizona dust on his fancy suit, with the pinstripes that raced up and down his long and lanky limbs. The straw boater he wore was tilted back and not doing much to keep out the sun. Tappet had driven the mile up from Silver Strike, through the scrub brush and low growing trees to try and talk Jack to death or get Jack to sell his land in town, whichever came first.

“Jack, I’m going to be honest with you. Silver Strike ain’t much of a town. No, that it isn’t. Hasn’t been much of one for a while now. Now, I’m not sayin it wasn’t a helluva town back in the old days, but the rest of the country has just about passed it by. Now Jack, I don’t mean to get your dander up, but that’s just the plain simple truth.” Tappet leaned back now and fixed Jack Kane with a long look of grim sorrow. But Tappet’s grin broke out and Jack found himself grinning back. You just couldn’t help responding when a man like Tappet smiled.

“But here’s a chance to bring Silver Strike back to its glory days. We can fill those streets up again and with people comes money! There are developers all over the Southwest now, taking these old ghost towns and putting them back on their feet and letting the average American relive the Old West. We’ll put in a museum and some actors with guns and spurs and hats and make Silver Strike come alive again.”

Jack stopped rocking and tilted his own hat back so he could get a better look at Joe Tappet. Tappet had arrived in town a little more than a month ago and had started buying up all the property in town. The Silk Cat, McMaster’s saloon, Dick’s dry goods store, all owned by one man now. Tappet had gone to relatives and the county government, snapping up deeds. The children and children of children of men and women that Earp had known back in the old days gave up their legacies without much fuss. Some of them hadn’t even been to Silver Strike and didn’t much care about an acre of desert.

Tappet was after Kane’s blacksmith shop and stable, now empty rows and cold hearths. The anvil and tools sold years ago when Jack closed it up for good. Not much trade for a metal worker once horses got replaced by automobiles. He retired on what he had saved and rented out the spot to a few tradesmen that had come through the area. Usually young men thinking they could make a living out here in the desert, selling gas alongside the new highways, trinkets to the tourists. But they all folded up and went along and Silver Strike was a ghost town with one living inhabitant.

Tappet kept talking while Jack’s thoughts ran down these same old lines. He came here in 1878 with Sarah, newlyweds, both only 18, and he started up a business with the skills that his father had taught him. Then John was born in 1879 and then James right after that in 1880. And it was hard. The town had just started to leave behind its earlier, rambunctious years. The worst of the gangs had been cleared out, what little Indian trouble there had been was long gone. There was still fighting in town on occasion and hell, there was even the whorehouse right on Main Street, as large as life, but things had settled down and it was possible to raise a family proper. Jack was even there when Silver Strike opened its first schoolhouse, with Jack’s kids being some of the first to start going there.

But then the land went sour and the decline began.

First went the silver mines. Miners came back with less and less and soon there wasn’t much left in the mines but blood and sweat and the mining companies weren’t paying much for that. Once the mines were gone, Silver Strike was dead, but just hadn’t caught on yet.

Fewer newcomers were coming and more people were going. Jack’s two sons lit up for San Francisco back in 1897 and started all over again. They tried to get Jack and Sarah to follow them out, but they stayed put in the home they built. Then Sarah left too, but she only went as far as the cemetery. Jack didn’t see his sons much after they left, but they wrote a postcard occasionally, always with a picture of a trolley car on the front. They got married, had kids, lost kids and Jack learned it all by post.

World War I and then the Great Depression and then the second World War all passed Jack by and he watched Silver Strike wither and die around him, a town he helped to build up from the desert, a town that grew up with his children and prospered when he prospered and failed when he failed.

“And that’s why it’s a good financial decision for you to sell me that spot of land you’ve got. Just think, children will be coming from all over the country and they’ll be able to learn what life was like for you back in your day! And it’ll be like Silver Strike is alive all over again!”

Jack raised his hands, brought back from the 19^th century to the middle of the 20^th by the insistent voice of Johnny Tappet. “I’ll sell Mr. Tappet, but on the sole condition that you keep it as it is. I don’t want you tearin’ it down and putting’ up one of those damn knick-knack shops that I seen you’ve done with The Silk Cat.”

Tappet grinned, his head splittin from ear to ear and he grabbed one of Jack’s hands and gripped hard, not noticing the wince that crossed Jack’s face. “You’ve got yourself a deal Jack, yessir, you’ve got yourself a deal. We’ll leave it just as it is. We might slap a new coat of paint on it and put up a new sign, but it’ll be one hundred percent genuine authenticated old west, I guarantee it or Johnny Tappet isn’t my name. I’ll have my lawyers draw up the papers and I’ll bring them round here so you can sign them.”

                Tappet practically bounced down the stairs and to his car and Jack just felt a sick feeling in his gut, like he just sold himself to Johnny Tappet.

                For a month, Jack heard the sounds of work crews coming from down the path that lead to Silver Strike. Big trucks moving up and down the newly paved highway, bringing in lumber and paint and supplies. And through it all, Jack stayed where he was. He went the long way to the grocery store, driving the old pick-up he’d had since 1932, avoiding Silver Strike, not wanting to see what they were doing to his town.

                Another month passed and the workers seemed to have stopped. It was dead in the middle of summer and Tappet must have rushed to get things ready by the height of the tourist season. Jack finally couldn’t take it anymore and put on his best suit. He climbed into his truck and headed down that dirt road. He hit the highway that now cut his road off short and turned left and kept on going. He passed a billboard sign that said SILVER STRIKE UP AHEAD and at the bottom RELIVE THE OLD WEST.  In the middle was a picture of a cowboy firing his two six-shooters at a band of feathered up Indians. Jack thought of Arapahoe Joe and shook his head with a smile. A smaller sign pointing to a side road came up next and Jack took the road and headed straight through Silver Strike. Cars were parked along the sides of the main road now, where horses used to be tied up and Jack followed suit and climbed out. And looked around at amazement.

                He had parked in front of McMaster’s saloon, where Jack had once seen a man shot and killed right in front of him, was now the Family Friendly Saloon! Now apparently endorsed by the Coca-Cola company judging by the large neon coke bottle in the windows. Jack peered into the window and saw that all the bar stools were replaced with saddles and that there were children sitting in there, pretending to ride them like horses. Jack squinted even more and saw that there were glasses of milk on the bar. Milk! The parents sat stiffly, the father wearing a massive ten-gallon hat on his head. Jack blinked and then continued to walk down the boardwalk, new pine boards replacing what had been there before and the smell seared his nostrils.

                Everywhere was the smell of fresh paint and new wood. As well as the sound of tourists. Dozens and dozens of men, women and children thronged around. Pointing at signs, taking pictures with their clunky browning cameras, children screaming and waving cap guns that popped and cracked, sounding nothing like real guns but still giving Jack a start. He leaned in close to one of the signs and read:

                ON THIS SPOT AN INDIAN SHOT AND SCALPED A MAN FOR INSULTING HIS SQUAW

                And below that there was a little drawing of a half naked Indian, feathers jammed into his long hair waving a knife. Jack thought hard and realized they were talking about when Arapahoe Joe shot Big Dave Chambers. But it hadn’t happened that way, for that reason and Joe certainly had not scalped Chambers. Jack frowned and made his way further. He saw that The Silk Cat had been torn down and replaced with a god damn souvenir stand. It was filled with fancy cowboy hats and cowboy boots and cowboy belts with cowboy beltbuckles, everything a person might need to feel like they were in the old west. Never mind that there had never been cattle anywhere near Silver Strike and that no self respecting cowboy would wear a giant chrome beltbuckle depicting a bunch of Texas longhorns being driven across a river. 

                Suddenly, Jack heard a loud voice in the street behind him.

                “Scott Masters! I’m calling you out! You done git out here and better get out your six shot pistols, cause I’ma gonna shoot you good.”

                Jack turned around and saw a man dressed entirely in black standing in the middle of the street. He had bright silver buttons and gold metallic threads running through his shirt and six ammo belt criss-crossing him this way and that way. He had a gun in each hand and a scowl plastered across his thuggish face. A man ambled out of the Family Friendly Saloon and called out, “Why, Dick Halloran, I done told you that I been gittin’ real sick and tired of you. This here whole town is tired of your cattle rustling and I aim to do somethin’ about it.”

                Scott Masters was dressed entirely in white and had the good looks of a movie star, perfect teeth and perfect hair styled beneath his white hat. He practically gleamed. Even his guns were white, with white sandalwood handles.

                “I don’t like the way you talk Scott Masters and I’m going to shoot you good. You git on over here and we’ll have ourselves a gunfight.”

                “That’s fine by me Dick Halloran. We’ll have it out right now.”

                They both ambled together in the middle of the street while all the tourists gathered around to watch. Jack watched as they began to take pictures of what was to come. Jack didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so he just kept silent and watched.

                Dick and Scott stood toe to toe and glowered at each other.

                “I don’t like your looks Scott Masters. You look like some kind of pretty boy. You’d probably go cry to your mommy.”

                “I’d rather look like a pretty boy than something the cat done dragged in.”

                Jack was starting to get bored. And apparently so were the visitors. “Just shoot him already!” someone called out and there was laughter. Even the cowboys weren’t bothering to keep a straight face.

                “Well all right, I’m gonna git you know Scott Masters!”

                “We’ll just see about that Dick Halloran! We walk ten paces and then turn and shoot.”

                They both stood back to back and began to walk while Scott called out the numbers. But at seven, Dick winked at the audience and then turned and fired, fan shooting at Scott’s back. Scott whirled around and pulled his own guns and fired back. Dick dropped his guns instantly and began to moan. “You got me Scott Masters! My brothers will avenge me though and then yer done fer! Ohhhhhhh!” And Dick dropped to the ground and was no more. Then Dick leapt to his feet and both of the actors took a bow for the cheering audience.

                “Next gunfight at 3 o’clock!” Dick said. And they talked to members of the audience and even took a few tips.

                Jack walked away, almost appalled by what he had seen. He had seen men he knew die in stupid, pointless gunfights over nothing. Usually over in minutes, usually with a minimum of talking and none of the ten paces. But that was ancient history to everyone around him, the stuff of movie matinees and television shows. The man in the white hat always won and the guy in the black always died and you knew that somewhere, there was a special girl for that white hatted man who would kiss him chastely as the screen faded to black.

                Jack walked up and down the boardwalk, seeing men selling bullets they claim they dug out of the walls of the saloon, men yelling out stories of what life was like back in those days (“There were Indians around every corner and women feared to walk in the streets or they might lose their scalps!”). He read more signs that twisted the old stories into something more exciting, more glamorous. They talked about friends he knew and made them villains and heroes. McMasters was the brave hero who brought down an entire gang of desperadoes, when Jack knew McMasters was hiding behind his bar the entire time while Prudence Delacroix took care of them. They talked about that preacher bounty hunter like he was some kind of hero, coming to town to kill a bad man, when really he was just a cold blooded murderer wearing a dog collar.

                Jack stopped outside the marshal’s office (Silver Strike had no marshal, just a sheriff) and watched as people stood in the jail and had their picture taken like they were big bad criminals. He leaned against the wall and felt every last one of his ninety years. He didn’t want to see his shop anymore. He didn’t want to see some ham-handed actor pounding away at an already completed horseshoe while he made up a story about being attacked by Indians or how they fought off bears. There was a bench nearby and he sank into it and buried his head into his hands.

                “Daddy, can we see the saloon again?”

                “No Bill, we’re going to see where the preacher caught the bad man.”

                “That’s not what happened!”

                Jack stood up and rage was nearly blinding him. A family stood in front of him, a mom and dad with their little boy.

                “I was there and I saw what happened. That preacher wasn’t no churchman. And he wasn’t after a bad man, he was after some woman who didn’t do anything wrong.”

                The mom looked at him, hesitated and asked, “You were there?”

                Jack scowled, “Yeah, I was there. I saw most of it happen and what I didn’t see I heard from people who did. You come here, to my town and pay money to hear what some silvertongued liar thought up to make a quick buck. This ain’t Silver Strike. Silver Strike died a long time ago. All they did was dig up the corpse and paint it up like a whore for your entertainment.”

                The mom and dad looked like they had been slapped and young Bill began to cry as Jack stalked off back to his truck and drove away.

                Later, Jack sat on his porch and rocked, back and forth. He closed his eyes and just rocked and wished the damn house would fall on him and get it over with.

                “Excuse me, sir?”

                Jack opened his eyes. A young man stood in front of him, a fedora stuck on his head.

                “What do you want?”

                “I heard you in town earlier, when you said that you lived here, knew what happened.”

                “That’s right, what about it?”

                “Well,  I’ve always been interested in the West and I came out here from New York to see it.”

                Jack snorted, “You came to one of these money grubbing tourist traps to learn about history? Not real bright, are you?”

                The man reddened and shrugged, “I just figured it’d be better to try and experience it, instead of just reading about it.”

                “Can’t experience the past boy. It’s been gone for a while. Go back East and read a book instead.”

                “I was hoping you could tell me some stories sir, it’s just…you know things better than they do. You could set it right and then at least, I’ll know how it really was.”

                Jack thought for a moment. “What’s your name boy?”

                “Stephen, Stephen Howell.”

                “Alright Stephen, you sit there a while and I’ll tell you some stories then. About what really happened.”

                And Jack began to talk.

Five Days of Something

It's All Part of the Plan

Random 2: The Randomizer