Previously, parts 1 – 3 have been published here, but I thought I would include them along with a new part 4. More to come in this continuing offbeat story. If you enjoy it, let me know. If you don’t, you can let me know that, too.
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The Cough Drop Kidd and the Kibitzer rode into town. It would have been in a cloud of mentholated dust, but because it was raining, it was in a slosh of mud and a cough laced with glycol. They were almost out of cough drops and the Kidd was not happy.
“Kibitzer,” he said between sniffles, “go get us some.”
“I’m only here to watch,” the Kibitzer said, “and for the popcorn.”
The Cough Drop Kidd pulled his six-shooter and pointed it at the head of Kibitzer’s horse. “You wanna observe riding or walking?”
The Kibitzer’s horse’s ears flicked back and forth as if trying drive away a fly. The Kibitzer blinked a couple times and finally said, “I’ll go watch the apothecary mix up a batch.”
The Kidd nodded and raised the barrel of his pistol skyward. “Be quick about it. I’ll be in the saloon getting a hot toddy. A little honey will help my throat.”
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The Kidd entered the saloon. It was beat up ol’ place with chairs that had legs that didn’t match and a bar rail so wobbly it had a hand printed sign hanging from it that said: Donut touch. That means u.
The floor creaked to the point he was sure it was talking to him, saying something like, “Donut go there.” But he paid it no heed as he stepped toward the bar. This part of the Wild Side was full of things that spoke when not spoken to. Some said it was haints. Others said it was spirits. And some even said it was bottled spirits. Even though he was wet all over, the Kidd was parched.
“Hey, dandy boy, wipe your feet. What do you think this is, your corral?”
A few people looked his way and a couple of folks chuckled, but most kept doing the mopping and card playing and lying they were doing before.
The woman yelling at him was tall and a little on the heavy side, which meant this business had been good to her. The Kidd liked that about her. She was standing behind the bar, so thus far what he liked was only from about the waist up. She was wiping out a glass.
When he was up near her, he whispered, “I’ll have a hot toddy.” His voice was about gone.
“Well, I do declare,” she said, “the dandy wants a hot toddy.”
“A what?” somebody at the bar asked. His back was to the Kidd, so the Kidd didn’t know what he looked like.
“A toddy. A hot toddy.” She said the words again and winked back at the Kidd. He wasn’t sure if it was a friendly gesture, or a twitch.
The man turned around. His face was as scuffed as the floor and as beaten up as the chairs. Tobacco juice ran out of one of the corners of his mouth. One eye was lazy and one earlobe looked as though a coyote had chewed on it.
“Dandy,” the man said, spitting on the floor, “we don’t serve your kind.”
It was that moment that the saloon went quiet, except for the gentle swinging of the saloon doors and the floor saying, “Told you.”
“Package,” a voice said. “Package for a Cough Drop Kidd. Is there a Cough Drop Kidd here?”
All eyes turned toward the Kidd.
The Kidd turned toward the delivery boy in his granny spectacles, gray cap with a black bill, and clothes too starched and too new to have been worn much in this town.
“One D or two?” the Kidd asked, lightning still flashing just outside the saloon doors.
“Ah,” the delivery boy looked down at the package, “two.”
“Good. The Kid with one D works the lower territory south of the divide. We call the divide the D-M-D for short.”
“And for long?” the boy asked.
“His D ain’t that long,” some cowboy shouted.
The others in the saloon chuckled.
The delivery boy turned bright red, dropped the package, and skedaddled out of the saloon, getting immediately struck by a lightning bolt. The box hit the floor and broke along one of its sides. It bulged open, spewing books across the hardwood, every last one of them different, one of each and each one about vampires.
“So, you a blood sucker, Dandy?” The floor-faced man stepped away from the bar and his hand rattled toward his holster. He had rattlesnake rattles in a band around his wrist and his hand twitched slightly.
The Kidd glanced around. The card games had stopped. The lying had stopped. Even the moping had stopped. The woman behind the bar twitched him another smile and then ducked down behind it. She moved quick for a big woman.
This town is cursed, thought the Kidd. But he didn’t have much time to think anything else. The floor-faced man’s hand was at the top of his holster.
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The apothecary was almost done making the cough drops, but the Kibitzer was tired of watching. He ho-hummed to himself, took another bite of some slightly stale popcorn, and decided watching was not always what he had pictured it would be. It was a very unpleasant observation and it did not sit well him or his stomach. The popcorn didn’t help. He belched once in hopes of relief.
It was during the descent of the belch out of his mouth that he heard what sounded like a pop, saw the delivery boy run out of the saloon, and then watched as lightning tripped the light fantastic across the kid’s body.
He then saw another two or three people scurry out of the saloon as if escaping an unpleasantry, like a distant relative’s interminable funeral or a spelling bee where they were next up and the word was interminable.
The Kibitzer forgot all about the cough drops and stepped outside, glancing toward the sky as if somehow he could observe a bolt of lightning before it hit him, and then considered running through the rain to the other side of the street.
That’s when a young lady came up and kneed him in the groin.
The Kibitzer dropped to the wooden sidewalk, balled up, and began rocking back and forth as if it might dissipate the pain.
“My name’s Bonnie,” she said, leaning over him. “No man leaves my apothecary without payin’ for what he ordered.”
“I wasn’t leaving,” the Kibitzer said, his teeth still clenched.
Finally, he rolled over onto all fours.
“Didn’t you see the kid out there? He got struck by lightning?”
Bonnie shrugged. “Happens a lot lately. He’ll be okay. Nobody in this town dies anymore. Been bad for my business, I tell you.”
The Kibitzer was again standing fully erect, if feeling a little tender. The rain had slackened to almost a light drizzle.
“We already lost two undertakers and the saw bones has gone back to yankin’ teeth. If it weren’t for medicinals for that, I’d probably be blowin’ in the wind, too.” She then slipped him the bill for the cough drops.
The Kibitzer looked at it. “What, no discount for the laying on of hands?”
She smiled at him, then raised her hand. In the muddled light of the evening, she still looked quite menacing. “I didn’t finish.”
The Kibitzer paid her and gave her a generous tip.
He then dashed out into the rain, forgetting the cough drops.
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“Now, now, gentlemen, there’s no need for fisticuffs.”
The voice preceded the groaning of the stairs behind the floor-faced man. A barrel-chested man appeared as if stepping out of an office built half-a-floor above the saloon.
The floor-faced man slid his hand down to his gun anyway, pulled it, and was aiming when the Kidd fired a shot that hit the gun, knocking it out of the floor-faced man’s hand.
The gathered crowd moved back and the floor-faced man scurried away. The man on the steps descended the rest of the way to the floor of the saloon.
“Some pretty fancy shootin’ there, pilgrim.”
The Cough Drop Kidd was as surprised as anyone, but he did his best to hide it. He slipped his pistol back into its holster.
The barrel-chested man walked up to the Kidd and extended his hand. “My name’s Al, Al Wayne, but you can call me Al.”
The Kidd extended his hand, keeping it clenched until the last second in order to keep it from shaking.
“You new in town, Kidd?”
The Kidd nodded.
Al looked over at the dropped box of books. “We don’t allow those type books in town. Frightens the children and some womenfolk.”
The Kidd looked over at the box. He thought about saying, again, it wasn’t his, that he hadn’t been expecting a package of any sort, but he didn’t want somebody else coming forth and accusing him of being a liar and challenging him on it, so instead, he said, “Well, Al, what sort of books do you allow?”
“Why, nice of you to ask,” Al said, reaching behind him and snatching a copy of the book from one of the saloon patrons. “This is the only good book we’re allowed to read here on the West Side. It’s called Global Warning. It’s one I wrote myself, before the collapse.”
Collapse? The Cough Drop Kidd didn’t know anything about a collapse. This was the only world he knew. He was about to ask when he heard the saloon doors swing open. He thought he better turn and take a look. Everybody else was.
(To Be Continued…)
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