The Ballad of Dingus Magee by David Markson Read Free Book Online Page A

manure.
    When he stood again he discovered he had bled a good bit down his right pantleg and into his boot. That sock was soggy, and he limped gingerly with his weight on the other foot. “Well, howdy do,” he muttered. He kept one hand clasped over the wound, which pained him only slightly.
    The shack was set apart from several others like it, amid tall weeds. There was no door, only a threadbare horse blanket hung from nails. Dingus considered this for a moment or two, then lifted the blanket and peered in.
    The single room was dense with smoke from an untrimmed wick, and the faulty lamp itself stood on an upended wood crate. Beyond that Dingus saw a disreputable shuck mattress on the dirt floor, a half-finished tin of beans on an upturned nail keg with flies swarming around that, and some rag ends of clothing hung from pegs. Otherwise there was nothing in the rank room except the man himself, whom Dingus did not know. He doubted that he wanted to. The man was tall and gaunt, with a face like a hastily peeled potato, and he had only one arm, the right one. He was also completely bald.
    “I’m ahurtin’,” Dingus told him.
    The man had been gazing emptily into the uneven, flickering glow of the lamp, and when he turned toward Dingus it was slowly, without surprise and without evident interest either. His long yellowed underwear was out at elbow and knee, spotted with savorings of a hundred meals. For a time he stood absently. Then his one arm lifted as if in accusation. “There’s gonter be violence wrought upon this new Sodom,” he intoned. “The wrathful fist of the Lord is gonter bring down fireballs and brimstone on it, sure as bulls has pizzles.”
    Dingus cocked his head in curiosity. The man scowled, preoccupied. Then he nodded. “It’s whoredom,” he said knowingly. “Whoredom and the barter of womanflesh, arunning rampant. The emissaries of Satan, that’s what they be, and their name is women.”
    “I’m ahurtin’ moderately bad,” Dingus said.
    But the man was brooding now, or perhaps he was somewhat deaf. He could have been Dingus’s own age or twice that; with the light gleaming on his hairless narrow lumpy skull Dingus found it impossible to tell. “Gomorrah,” the man muttered. “But like it come to them cities of the plain, so too’s it gonter come to Yerkey’s Hole, which is a turd-heap and a abomination in the eye of the Lord. That’s a fact, ain’t it?”
    “I ain’t thought about it none,” Dingus said, remotely interested now. So now the tall man merely belched.
    “Womenflesh and womenwhores,” he said, “but they ain’t atricking Brother Rowbottom, even if’n my appointed mission ain’t quite clear yet. Give me a dollar.”
    “It’s got started throbbing some,” Dingus remembered.
    He was still holding one hand against the wound. “How far up the path there is the doc’s?”
    “The doc’s?” The hand of the tall man rose and fell contemptuously. His voice was becoming more resonant now also. “A doc of the bones. I am a doc of the spirit, a doc of the soul. The wages of sin is Boot Hill, sure as sheep get buggered, but the way to salvation burns like a dose of clap. Ain’t you got a lousy dollar to give me?”
    “I reckon I’ll find it myself, then,” Dingus decided.
    “Go then. But you’re gonter regret it, same’s all the rest, soon’s I get the notification clear about my mission, oh yair.” Abrupdy the man whirled to settle himself onto the shuck mattress, pulling a motded quilt about his trunk with his one arm. The activity revealed an upright whiskey jug at the wall. “Go,” he muttered.
    “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Dingus told him.
    The man yanked the quilt over his head, turning aside. “Go on, scram,” he repeated. “Beat it. See if I give a fart on a wet Wednesday.”
    Dingus shook his head, backing out. “Folks is right kindly,” he told his horse, still holding himself. He began to draw the animal along a rocky path