A Paunch Full of Pesos

A PAUNCH FULL OF PESOS

by Norman Crane

Published by Norman Crane at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 Norman Crane

About the Author, i.e. me

I live in Canada. I write books. I’m also a historian, a wise guy and a cinephile. When I’m not writing, I’m probably reading or trying to cook. Philip Dick, Haruki Murakami and Graham Greene are some of my favourite authors. I enjoy fiction that makes me curious because curiosity makes me creative. I peer under mossy rocks, knock on hollow trees and believe in hidden passageways—not because I have proof of their existence, but because imagining them is itself the reward. I like non-fiction for the same reason. I also like computers, text editors and mechanical keyboards.

For more info and links to my writing, please visit my website: normancrane.ca

Chapter 1. Dead Pedro

The first bullet drilled a hole clean through the bandito’s sombrero, through which the rays of the hot noonday sun fell like whips on the glistening muzzle of Fenimore’s rifle, peeking out from between two dusty rocks a good hundred paces away. The bandito didn’t move. He’d already drawn his revolver. He merely cocked his head, and the sun’s rays slid from the muzzle to a thick bead of sweat gathering on Fenimore’s brow. Fenimore didn’t say a word. He just chomped down on his cigar, moved the muzzle slightly to the left, squinted—and made sure the second bullet didn’t miss.

It hit straight into the bandito’s forehead like an Ash Wednesday cross.

The rays disappeared.

The bandito crumpled to the ground.

Fenimore slung his rifle over his shoulder, took one last drag of his cigar and tossed it aside. It hit the ground no less dead than the bandito.

Fenimore rose from his crouch, watched—no dust rose on the horizon—and listened. There was no beating of hooves. Nobody else was coming. They’d underestimated him. He grinned and looked forward to wearing clothes again. Save for the timepiece on his wrist he was naked, and the relentless sun had burned his skin brown.

He lowered himself down the side of the outcropping from which he’d shot, and circled to where he’d hidden his tired, thirsty burro. There’d be water in the bandito’s pack, he thought, untying the burro and patting its warm chest. He still hadn’t decided what he’d do with the bandito’s horse. Take it with him and sell it, probably.

The bandito’s corpse lay on its back, its eyes half open and still fully plastered over by the sheen of surprise. Bright blood trickled from the hole in its head.

Fenimore recognised the dirty face underneath: Pedro—a hired gun who rode with Ulrich’s gang, but not one of the dangerous ones. Pedro, as far as Fenimore remembered, had been a brave bad shot. Good qualities for a foot soldier, but bad ones for staying alive. Not that it mattered anymore. What mattered was that Ulrich had underestimated him. As for Pedro, he wouldn’t ever shoot a gun again. It was good to be underestimated. It was bad to be dead.

Fenimore pulled off Pedro’s boots, followed by his wide leather gun belt, cotton pants, worn shirt and navy-white poncho.

The dirty body underneath was flabby and hairy, and for a few seconds the sight of it made Fenimore wonder whether any woman loved it, whether the small time Mexican gunslinger had had a small Mexican wife who’d given birth to thin, barefoot Mexican children. But then the stink of death hit so hard that Fenimore ripped his eyes away. Each man chooses his own path. In doing so, each also chooses the way—if not the exact circumstance—of his death.

The bright blood flowing from the hole in Pedro’s head had turned still and dark.

Fenimore put on the dead man’s boots and clothes, tied the dead man’s horse to his own burro, and took a long drink from the dead man’s canteen. When his lips were wet and throat no longer dry, he let the burro drink the water, too. Its ears shot up at the first refreshing taste. The horse turned its emaciated snout to beg for a sip, but Fenimore didn’t let the horse drink. If it died, so be it. He wouldn’t get much for it anyway. He then tied Pedro’s gun belt around himself, inserted Pedro’s revolver into the holster and mounted his burro.

He looked ridiculous on the little animal, but he felt good.

The burro began its lumbering walk.

Pedro’s horse followed.

Eight hooves made eight dull sounds on the tough ground and as he rode Fenimore felt a few coins rattling around in his new pants pocket. They made a rhythmic jingle-jangle that somehow matched the monotony of the landscape around him. Jingle-jangle. The sun moved. Jingle-jangle. The shadows lengthened. Jingle-jangle and jingle-jangle and nothing except the passing emptiness…

When he finally stopped for the night, Fenimore took the coins out of his pocket and held them, one-by-one, between his thumb and forefinger against the darkening sky. He observed each in turn. The coins were seven. Six were old and grimy, probably whore money or poker winnings, but the seventh was clean and beautiful: freshly minted, and even more freshly stolen.

Seven coins for seven faces.

Six grimy ones for the six men who’d taken from him—Constanza, The Slovak, Butcher Bellicose, Tartaro, The Little Pimp, and Ulrich—and the seventh for the woman he’d loved, who’d sold him for a future full of dollars, and who now went unnamed, even in his head.

When he was done brooding, Fenimore stacked all seven coins in the palm of his hand and squeezed them into a fist as hard as he could. He would crush them. One-by-one, he would hunt them down and kill them.

He wanted to toss the coins into the air and massacre them with Pedro’s revolver.

But he was getting ahead of himself.

He was letting his emotions take control of his mind.

He focussed his thoughts, relaxed his fist, uncurled his long fingers and dropped the coins back into his pocket. There would be a time and place for revenge. Paths would cross, even on a continent as great and untamed as this one, but that would be many days and many adventures from now. Tonight, he needed rest. Tomorrow, he would formulate a plan. In the coolness of the present evening, although he finally felt safe enough to close his eyes, he was also broke and hungry.

As he lay himself down to sleep, Fenimore felt weaker and more alone than he’d ever felt. Even during the survival days he’d not felt this way. He’d had company. Tonight was also the fourth consecutive night that he was spending alone, and he wasn’t used to it. A man gets used to the female shape. Sleeping without a woman’s body—without his woman’s body—next to him was as strange as riding without a horse. He had nowhere to put his arms and no one with whom to share his warmth. He was swimming without water. He was a fire without heat. He was the empty landscape and the day’s heavy, closing eyelids. They had taken everything from him, but it was she who had taken his soul, leaving him as bare and exposed as he’d left Pedro, with just the one-hole sombrero on his head and all of America chomping at the bit to swallow him up.

He imagined a pair of vultures pecking away at Pedro’s body, pulling at long, elastic bits of flesh.

He remembered Master Taki once telling him, Everything breaks. Give something enough time, and it cracks. Then Master Taki had—click—opened the safe. Everything breaks.

Even trust.

Even love.

A shot rang out.

A bullet bit the rocky ground a few paces from his body and ricocheted away.

Fenimore scrambled behind Pedro’s gaunt horse.

The horse took the next bullet to its chest, its knees buckled, and down it went. Fenimore went down with it: unslinging his rifle and using the struggling horse’s overturned body for cover. Better the horse than the burro, he thought. Thinking kept him calm. He scanned the dark horizon with the muzzle of his rifle for shapes, for movement.

There was nothing.

There was another shot.

This one whizzed by just above Fenimore’s head.

Instinct made him duck.

The horse was still breathing: wheezing.

At least he knew the direction the shots were coming from. It wasn’t the direction from which he’d come. Unless someone was intentionally playing at disorientation, the shooter wasn’t someone who’d been in pursuit.

Fenimore unloaded a blind rifle shot into the darkness to keep the shooter on his toes.

It was returned immediately along with the words, You goddamn bastard cocksucker!

The burro started braying.

The words continued, punctuated by bullets. I seen you in your blue poncho. I seen you through the sky glass, cocksucker. Goddammit. Goddamn, thief fuck.

Blue poncho? Fenimore peaked out, saw a lone figure on horseback in the distance—closing in on him—and hugged the ground again. He gripped his rifle.

The man you’re looking for is dead, he said toward the murky sky. I took his clothes.

He was thinking: estimating the horse’s speed, trying to calculate the best moment to stand up, aim and shoot the rider down.

I bet you killed him, you lying fuck.

I’ll kill you, too.

To keep the rider talking, that was the most important thing. To judge the distance by his approaching voice.

And if you did kill him, which I ain’t saying I believe in, what so? Does killin’ my enemy make you my friend?

A gunshot clipped the sentence.

The voice didn’t seem any louder than the last time.

Fenimore peeked over the horse again.

The rider had stopped closing, but he was still too far and the evening was too deep.

It makes nothing. Keep the peace and move on, Fenimore said. If the rider had stopped, perhaps he could be persuaded to turn around.

Well goddamn, but I don’t believe it.

Then believe there are more rifles on you. It was worth a try. Come closer and you’ll be face-down dead.

The rider laughed. He had a hee-hawing, old man’s laugh. I do believe you are alone, cocksucker thief fuck. My sky glass told me so, and I do believe what my sky glass tells me.

The horse expired.

The way I see it, the only cover you got is that ugly horse of yours, and I got enough bullets on my person and the person of my pretty horse to keep your noggin’ right down till ten mornings from now, which, goddamit, means I got enough bullets to rip through that wall of meat you think you can hide behind, bone by brittle bone. Else I’ll just watch the sun dry you up.

Everything breaks, Master Taki had said.

Even me.

Fenimore considered leaping to his feet, locking his knees, taking the best possible early shot, and suffering the consequences—probably more than once, and probably to the head and to the chest and to the gut.

It was a brave idea, going out in a hail of bullets, but a dumb one. Pedro had been dumbly brave. Fenimore wasn’t Pedro. That was precisely the problem.

Ask me a question, he yelled.

You don’t interest me in any way except dead.

Have you ever killed an innocent man?

Ain’t worried about that.

Fenimore wiggled out of Pedro’s navy-white poncho and draped it over the end of his rifle, which he lifted above the horse, waving it like a flag.

Three shots rang out. Straight through the poncho they flew, and far, far away.

Then nothing.

Then, Where’d you get that? the rider asked.

I don’t interest you.

That’s right, cocksucker, but I am interested in whoever you stole that gadget from. And dead men don’t talk, even nonsense. Speak the fuck up, now.

Fenimore realized the rider was talking about his timepiece. He lowered his arm, the rifle and the shot up poncho. The timepiece had been his father’s. A prototype, there wasn’t another like it in the world, and none at all on this side of the ocean. In Europe, they had them for women, or so Fenimore had been told once, a long and hazy time ago.

Toss it over, along with yer rifle and that revolver you got on yer belt, and maybe I’ll let you live a few hours.

The rider truly had been watching him. It wasn’t a bluff. But at least this was a chance. If the rider wanted just the timepiece he could as easily get it off Fenimore’s dead wrist as his live one. And if getting rid of the timepiece—he pressed stinging sweat out of his eyes—meant saving his life, that was a gift that his father would have gladly given, had already given him once.

He slid the timepiece off his wrist and let it fall into his hand. Its face was silver, circular and covered by a thin layer of glass. The glass was dirty, and the sky reflected in it was distorted. When Fenimore adjusted the angle, his reflection, too, became a distortion.

Don’t try nuthin’ funny.

Fenimore tore a square of material from the shirt he was wearing, wrapped it around the timepiece and tied a tight knot. He unloaded Pedro’s revolver and his rifle, and lobbed both over the dead horse, in the direction of the rider. Finally, he palmed the makeshift cloth sack and lobbed it over, too. What he would have given for just one grenade…

When he heard the rider’s horse come within stomping distance, Fenimore stood. There was no more point in hiding. Either the rider had been bluffing or not, and if there was a point to a bluff Fenimore couldn’t figure it out. There was certainly a value to the timepiece. Thievery was reasonable.

Fenimore’s burro had stopped braying.

The rider, who was indeed an old man, had dismounted his horse, which wasn’t actually very pretty at all, and was unwrapping the cloth sack with the nimble fingers and excited expression of a boy touching his first pair of breasts. When he saw the timepiece, his eyes lit up and spittle nearly dropped from between his lips.

He looked up at Fenimore.

And hooted!

Well damn myself to fuck sideways cunt face, you ain’t the thief bastard, truly. Hoo hoo hoo! But when Fenimore lifted a boot off the ground to take another step forward, the rider raised his bony arm just as fast to point the barrel of a strange looking gun in Fenimore’s face. You sure got the burnt skin, though. How long you been out in the elements? You one of them crazies from Gulliver’s Participle?

The rider’s eyes darted back and forth from the timepiece to Fenimore to the timepiece to Fenimore to—

Fenimore ducked, leapt and grabbed the rider’s gun.

It went off.

With a deafening blast.

And a cloud of choking black smoke.

But when the cloud cleared and both men regained their breathing, it was Fenimore who was holding the right end of the gun and the rider who was staring into its barrel.

Hoo hoo hoo! Well I be goddamned. Not one of them crazies, neither. I got to admit my mistake. I do believe I am interested in you. Without waiting for a response, he disregarded the gun pointing at his gut and went back to inspecting the timepiece, which he still held, carefully, in his left hand. What do you say we trade your story for my soup?

Fenimore didn’t answer. He stepped to the side to collect the rifle and the revolver he’d thrown over. The man whose poncho I was wearing, why’d you want to kill him?

Wasn’t innocent, the rider mumbled while wiping the timepiece with the outside of his shirt sleeve. When he was done, he looked up. This—He held up the timepiece like women sometimes hold up their favourite babies.—is remarkable workmanship. What so of the soup, do you say? Fuck.

Fenimore’s trigger finger twitched.

Apologies, the rider said. Goddamit! He stomped his feet. It’s only a tiny problem with the communication, cocksucker, that’s all, ain’t nothing to give you the fears. He was apparently referring to his predisposition to cursing.

He