The Gunfighter


(This is from the Ash Fork series, and posted in July of this year. I am doing some re-runs while I look through some of the story lines and ideas that came up in the daily stream, to see what I might do next. )

"It's no different from the Japanese Samurai archetype in Japan," Bergamo said. He had to speak over the noise of an old west zoo of passengers, all of whom were part of the train's probability drive, part of the archetype of a time and place.

They were traveling West, to San Francisco and Los Angeles and Portland and Seattle. But in another dimension the train was a digitized world, mathematically sealed, that could as quickly and easily proceed on westward to China and Japan.

Father Roland was drunk, and he'd become very animated so that as Indian Shadow watched him and listened to him he realized he was watching a young child. As he realized this, Count Bergamo touched his own heart with his left hand.

Indian Shadow felt a sudden welling of emotion that wanted to break open his chest. He was used to letting his feelings pass on through, because if you hold on to them it blocks the tracks and the trains quit running. So he let it go and a thunderous cry roared out of the cage where he'd kept it since he lost Paris and the baby in one eternal battle with the exterminators.

The cry shattered the faces of the crowd like a high note demolishing the wine glasses and there was a moment of silence, except for the fiddler, who'd waited all his life for a moment of silence, without the goddamned banjo.

Inside the moment of silence there was an awful sadness that ran like a phantom through the car, touching something behind the clothes and the manners and the connection of one story to the next, remembering the past. The phantom was composed of stories you've been told, or stories you've told yourself, and he was lost in time.

The fiddler had used the moment of silence to hear his violin channel Mozart, but nobody remembered, and then the banjo kicked in again. Darlene used the moment of silence to shake like a dog throwing off water and when she'd turned it loose she sat down at the boxy piano and began to keep a rolling rhythm with her left hand while her right hand picked out the notes.

The phantom returned to his master, Count Bergamo, and slipped behind his smile. "Gazoontite," he said.

Indian Shadow's color was high and electricity seemed to be dancing around his face, like there was a swarm of faces that'd been disturbed by whatever broke loose. "Damn!" he said. "Damn. I want to learn how to do that."

"I know." Bergamo learned forward to cut the cards on the table in front of him. He turned over the Jack of Hearts and showed it to Indian Shadow. "Like I said, the Gunfighter is a magician who can blow holes in his opponent from a distance. A lot of people think if he gets close enough they can take his gun away from him, with some move they've been taught, but no matter how fast they are, he can pull the trigger quicker than they can think. They count on a hesitation that's missing from the scene. But the gunfighter doesn't like guns. That's why he fights them."

"I believe the word derives from a man who fights with a gun -- that is to say, using a gun as his weapon of choice -- not against one," Roland said in a prim, solicitous voice.

With his eyes now opened, Indian Shadow saw a woman, and he knew he was seeing the mother, and hearing her correcting the child, believing she was teaching him something. She was. She was teaching him to imitate her with other people. He saw that what irritated him about Roland was that he kept shifting from mother to child, and it was disconcerting. He was never a man with his feet on the ground.

Again Bergamo observed his blossoming understanding and again sent the energy through him, as if he was flushing out the dross from the gold. "Where's the father?" he asked.

Indian Shadow knew if there was a child and a mother there ought to be one more character but there wasn't. The father was missing. "I'm the father," Roland said, absently, admiring the rough fabric of his cowl. "Imagine that? The father of a god no less?" They had been drinking whiskey so Roland was a bit more loosened up than usual.

Indian Shadow had never heard him directly claim parental relationship to Jules. He'd only heard it from Jules himself. But now Roland was waxing on, "I've never really liked children but I think it was because you have to be so careful these days, or somebody will say you were too affectionate or touched something you ought not to touch, so I just said, 'Not for me, no thank you.' Besides, Cary says we couldn't even keep the cat from being killed. It was poisoned and I know who did it ..."

The child was back in the driver's seat.

"Now you know what a witch is," Bergamo said, looking Indian Shadow in the eye.

"Bitch is more like it," said Father Roland. His elbow slid off the table and his head almost crashed into it before he caught himself. "Poor Peanut. The autopsy proved he drank anti-freeze."

"At least he didn't freeze to death," Indian Shadow said. "You don't look good. Maybe you better go on back to Coach and find an empty bench to sleep on."

"Eventually I shall."

"Eventually I'll have to haul your fat ass out there because you'll be passed out. You better go now."

Father Roland stood up and bowed slightly, regaining his composure. He was back to the careful, polite lawyer persona. His voice was well lubricated when he said, "Perhaps you're right. I thrust I was not in any whey whasoever root to you."

"Sleep it off," Indian Shadow repeated, giving the priest minimal attention so as to discourage his saying anything else. They watched Father Roland move through the curtain, back to a more deserted car, where he could fall asleep. "Which one of the three rules when he's asleep?" he asked. "Or do they take turns?"

Bergamo swirled the whiskey around in his glass. He seemed to have an endless capacity for alcohol, though his eyes looked more soft focused than when Indian Shadow first saw him. "Who gives a shit? Do you?"

"I guess I must if I was wondering."

"Well if you find yourself on an inter-dimensional train ride with the man who drives the train, as you do now find yourself, what do you care about the dreams of priests?"

"It's part of the ride, I guess."

"I see why Jules chose you to come along, Indian Shadow. You're an honest man."

"I don't always tell the truth, if that's what you mean."

"No, that's not what I mean. I don't always tell the truth, either. But what I'm telling you about myself is the truth, that I have never been and I won't ever be a hired gun. Paradoxically, the only way you can escape being a hired gun is to be so good you can go wherever you want to go without fear. The weapons are secondary. It's the skill that's important and it's fear who's the worthy adversary. You take somebody with weapons and no skill, they'll kill you for no reason except out of fear. All the damage is done by people who have no power of their own, and have to gather it up from other people."

"From what people?"

"Powerless people, once they get it."

Indian Shadow considered that he couldn't remember what Bergamo had just said, but that in some way he was loosened up and talking about himself like Father Roland had been. Bergamo saw the thought as it formed because he read the muscle movements and through them the nervous system. There was no linear process to it; it would have been impossible if he had to think about it or try to do it logically. It just happened, like when he was a young man and played Backgammon, he'd see a weak television picture in his mind and his hand would move to the right hole every time. He didn't have to count or even look at the board. He had invested in sharpening that skill.

"You're talking about somebody in particular or just talking?"

Count Bergamo studied the Indian like he was made out of wood and standing at the door of a cigar store. "You're a smart son-of-a-bitch aren't you?"

"You tell me. You're driving the train."

"I'm talking about somebody in particular. The reason we're headed west is to try and settle someplace where he can't find us."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know. What I do know is that the reason Jules called me into service was that American Futures managed to salvage enough sperm to generate another DNA computerized person. But this one didn't get away before they put the parameters around it. This one's a hired gun."

They'd been paying too much attention to each other and both welcomed the intrusion into the conversation of Darlene, pink and lively, but with no smell of whiskey on her. There was a more organic scent clinging to the fiery red hair framing her white scottish face.



She slid into a chair between them and took hold of Bergamo's arm with proprietary ease. "Who is this beast you've taken up with?" She frowned at Indian Shadow and shook her head. "Don't you know better than to damage the merchandise?"

"I'm afraid he doesn't understand inter-galactic commerce, my pet." She turned toward him and they kissed full on the mouth. It lasted. And lasted. Indian Shadow shifted in his chair and looked away. He looked back and they were nuzzling each other. She was speaking into his mouth but Indian Shadow didn't listen to what she was saying. Besides, it was faraway and more like the sounds of a sunny afternoon beside a creek than words with meaning.

"Excuse me," he said. "I need to sleep awhile."

Bergamo separated himself from Darlene. "You're being polite, but don't bother. Kiss her if you want. You'll never taste sweeter lips than Darlene's."

"I'm sure she doesn't want to kiss a stranger. My apologies, ma'am."

"Actually, I am a whore," Darlene said with a brilliant smile. "I think it sounds more friendly than prostitute, don't you?"

"I think it does, yes ma'am." His ears were red.

Bergamo motioned for Darlene to leave them. She pressed her fingers to her lips and touched Indian Shadow on the thigh before she danced away from the table on her toes like a ballerina, her arms extended, her head regally posed on her slender white neck, a sly smile on her lips. Indian Shadow's mouth went slack. "How does she do that?" he asked Bergamo.

"She's elemental," he said.

"What does that mean?"

"She's one component of the total psyche driving this train. She's the archetype of the prostitute. Any shame you might expect her to feel about being a whore belongs to you, and it's a defense against something powerful enough to disintegrate you, my man. I can assure you that Darlene not only feels no shame or remorse about being a whore, she can do with her sexual energy what I do with heart energy. If you ever feel it, you'll know a real whore from just a woman doing business."

He drew a gold watch from its pocket and opened the front of the case.

"That watch is like mine," Indian Shadow said.

"Gifts from Jules." Bergamo looked at the face and then closed the cover over it. "It's time," he said.

"Time for what?"

"This train? It's no different from the tea garden. It's just a place between two worlds, and the only reason you're riding on it is that it would shock you unconscious if you just shifted directly. You have to have some kind of connection to the idea of moving from one place to another, a sense of leaving one place and arriving in a different place, to believe you actually traveled somewhere."

"Do you, too?"

"No, but I did the first time Jules showed me how to shift. It takes time to get used to not needing time."

"Like methadone? You have to wean yourself off the time habit by traveling on a steam locomotive?"

"Whatever analogy works for you. You want another drink?"

"I guess so, yea. So what you're saying is we can arrive where we're going whenever we want to?"

"That's about the size of it. It's when I think you're ready. Like I said, I'm driving the train." Count Bergamo poured another shot into Indian Shadow's glass.

Indian Shadow thanked him and picked up the glass, inhaled the scent of the whiskey, and then set it back down. He might be an Indian but he knew when he'd had enough to drink, and was about to shift to too much. He leaned toward Bergamo and asked, "How did you meet Jules, anyway? I thought we were the only people he trusted."

"I don't know about that because I'm not exactly a person. I'm more like an American god."

"You said you're a gunfighter."

"Like I said, I'm more like an American god."

Posted: Mon - December 18, 2006 at 04:23 PM