[Editor’s note: Parts 1 – 4 on the blog. You can click on “Kibitzer or Kidd in the Tags below to reach he previous entries. I am working to make this a monthly feature on the blog. Hope you enjoy this science fiction western with a dash or two of humor set in a quirky time and place: not quite and not quite there.]
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The Kibitzer didn’t know what to make of the situation when he stumbled though the swinging saloon doors and everybody was staring at him. Normally, he was the one doing the staring.
Rain dripped off his hat and clothes.
He smiled. No one smiled back, not even the Kidd. As he stepped the rest of the way into the saloon, he heard a voice say, “Donut go there.”
He looked down at the floor, certain that’s where it came from. But how could the floor speak?
“Did you get them?” the Kidd asked.
“Wipe your feet,” the robust saloon woman said.
The Kibitzer pointed outside. He made a slash like lightning, raised his knee, and then spread his arms wide.
“Speak. You know I don’t read pantomime.”
“Maybe I can help,” Al Wayne said. “He probably saw one of our fair citizens zapped by lightning who then got up and walked away. The first time somebody witnesses it, it tends to leave them at a loss for words.”
The Kibitzer pointed at Wayne and nodded.
“I talk about it in my book, Global Warning. Though I’m not quite sure what the raised knee means.”
The Kibitzer turned slightly red.
The saloon doors swung open again. This time Bonnie came through, carrying a bag. She, too, dripped rain on the floor, but the Kibitzer didn’t hear anything from the floor, or what he thought was the floor, as she approached.
“You forgot these.” She held them out toward him holding the bag between her finger and thumb as if trying to be ladylike or as if what was inside was as foul as fresh dog poop.
The Kibitzer nodded toward the Kidd.
Bonnie didn’t move.
The Kibitzer nodded again. He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t speaking. He had been able to after she kneed him. Was the big guy with the bent sheriff’s star on his chest right? Was it the excitement of seeing somebody zapped by lightning, then being told he would rise from the dead, then begin to see the dead stir as he ran across the wide street of mud that left him, the Kibitzer dumbfounded? He had witnessed many things, even eaten some bad popcorn while witnesses them, but he had never been at a loss for words – until now.
“Don’t worry, Kibbey, I won’t knee you again.”
Kibbey? No one called him Kibbey!
The entire room broke out in laughter. Even the big guy with the bent star chuckled.
Nobody told Bonnie to wipe her feet.
(To Be Continued…)
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