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

which led toward the main cluster of buildings.
    It was a walk of some length, but he was still amused. He knew roughly where the doctor’s would be, anyway, even approaching from the rear, and then a moon appeared, which helped.
    But he had not yet achieved his destination when a dark squat figure loomed up to block his way. He was passing the fractured remains of an abandoned sutler’s wagon, and he sprang against it, a handjerking at one of his revolvers.
    “You want bim-bam? Best damn bim-bam this whole town.”
    This time Dingus laughed aloud, releasing the gun. The squaw’s thickly buttered hair gleamed dimly, and she stank of it. She was short and square-headed.
    “You look for bim-bam, hey? Twenty-five cent, real hot damn bargain.”
    “I look for the doc’s,” Dingus said.
    “Doc’s? Why you look for there? You come scoot on around behind wagon, Anna Hot Water fix you up pretty damn nifty, better than that old doc. What for you hold onto yourself that way for anyhow, hey?”
    But Dingus had limped past her, considering a row of adobe brick houses which fronted on the main street. “That’s Doc’s, ain’t it—on up to the end there?”
    “Maybe, sure, who care?” The squaw trundled after him. “You don’t change your mind first, hey? You go to Big Blouse Belle’s, pay whole damn dollar. Anna Hot Water, only damn independent bim-bam in town. Damn hot stuff too, you betcha. Twenty cent, maybe? Fifteen?”
    Dingus left her, grimacing when the odor followed him for a time, although still laughing to himself. The pain had diminished almost wholly now. He led his horse into the doctor’s small barn, easing its bit but not unsaddling the animal, before he crossed the silent sandy yard to knock at the rear door.
    The doctor appeared almost at once, a short, elderly, scarcely successfiil but roguish-eyed man carrying a lamp that he raised for recognition’s sake. That came immediately also. “Well,” he said cheerfully, not quietly either, “ifn it ain’t Dingus. Been expecting you, what with another of your chums just brought in. You come for your vest like always, I reckon?”
    “I reckon. Only I also got a—”
    “Well, come in, come in!” The doctor waved him into a familiar kitchen, turning to set aside the lamp. “I jest put that feller Turkey to sleep inside—nothing but a scratch, actually.” He was dipping water into a coffee pot with a gourd, his back turned. “But you’re gonter get one of them poor critters murdered yet, you know that, don’t you?”
    “Ah, Doc, you know Hoke—he couldn’t hit nobody if’n he was shooting smack-bang down a stone well. Matter of fact he missed Turkey so bad tonight, durned if’n he dint go and—”
    “Sit a spell,” the doctor said, glancing across his shoulder. “You look a mite peaked yourself.”
    “Don’t reckon I can,” Dingus said.
    “Can’t what?”
    “Can’t sit,” Dingus said. “What I been trying to tell you, about how Hoke ain’t never gonter murder nobody. Shucks, he were aiming at Turkey all the while, but durned if’n the old blind mule-sniffer dint go and plink me square in the ass—”
    “There some new preacher feller in town these days, Doc?” Dingus asked. He lay on his stomach on a leather couch, with his head raised as he tried to watch.
    “Stop jiggling, there,” the doctor told him. “If a man could get to see his own backside without he needed a mirror, I reckon maybe folks wouldn’t get booted there so frequent as they do. What’s that about a preacher?”
    “Tall feller, bald as a bubble. Got only one arm.”
    “Oh, that’s jest Brother Rowbottom. Can’t say if’n he were ever ordained anywheres, but he does take himself for a preacher at that, if’n he can get anybody to listen. Talk about a good swift foot where it fits, he gets that from old Belle Nops pretty regular himself, seeing as how he’s got the notion that the best place to tell folks about sin is where they’s doing it. Goes