All stories

This was not the holiday Cathy had hoped for.

She unhooked an arm from hugging her knees, and picked up her authentic Wild West cardboard cup, sucked sarsaparilla through the authentic Wild West plastic straw, and pulled an authentic Geordie face of disgust. Putting the cup back in the dirt beside her, Cathy rubbed her hands over her arms, shoulders, neck, stomach, and legs, before dragging all ten fingertips from her hairline to her chin. There was dust over her skin, over her clothes, in her hair. Quickly checking she wasn’t observed, Cathy slid a thumb around the crotch panel of her specially bought Daisy Dukes and tried to wriggle them into a more comfortable position - there was dust everywhere.

The sound of an authentic Wild West gong brought Cathy’s attention back to the scene, and she half joined the authentic Wild West rattle of applause, managing to put together a pair of unenthusiastic claps before leaning back against the fibreglass wall off the authentic Wild West saloon behind her, and trying to pull her face into something other than open contempt, as the person responsible for all this turned to smile at her.

Stuart, the man Cathy had married, or at least some middle-aged approximation of him, was currently fumbling his fingers into what she could only assume were authentic Wild West shooting gloves. Twenty paces up the street, a significantly more attractive man rolled his eyes in faux-disdain and spat a marble of phlegm into the authentic Wild West sand which covered the street. Receiving a not-so-subtle thumbs up from the adolescent who’d been jockeying ‘Lone Star Stu’ into a state of something like readiness, the character cowboy began calling out his bespectacled opponent with a hackneyed string of compound adjectives.

A pubescent page waved his arms in a downward motion to signal the assembled crowd into a hush, as somewhere an authentic Wild West bongos player tried to drum some tension into the atmosphere. Stuart turned once more to Cathy, like a toddler checking its mum was watching, so she threw him a bone by pulling her fingers to her mouth in parody of a nail-biting pose.

What Cathy could only assume was an authentic Wild West multi-purpose female had stepped into the space between the two men, and was dangling an authentic Wild West silk handkerchief from sun-leathered fingers. She looked to each gunfighter, tipping a stage-wink at Stuart, and dropped the frilly prop before quickly backing away.

Each man pulled a trigger, one markedly before the other, and shots rang out. Some idiot in the crowd gasped, while everyone waited for the result. It was clear, even from where Cathy sat, that Stuart’s aim was somewhere off towards the authentic Wild West car-park on his right, but that didn’t stop the man directly inline with her clumsily-costumed husband from suddenly clutching his chest, bursting a blood capsule between his fingers, and taking a controlled fall to the floor.

Cathy pulled her authentic Wild West iPhone from the pocket of her shirt and checked the time. Two minutes until the saloon started serving authentic Wild West cider, thank Jesse James for that!

Transcript of Interview of Arthur “Slim” Dooley by Anna Melrose of the Missouri Bugle, 12 April 1934.

“How can I answer you missy, well, it all depends what picture they’re a wantin’ to see. Give ‘em a glimpse of the shiny tassels on the breasts of the girls in the Dodgewood Saloon and let em taste a whiskey slid down a bar I say.

As last man standing it don’t matter to me.

My experience is that the more eye-stretching the story is, the more an editor pays and I can tell it any way, dirty for the bars, noble for the bluestocking legion. The Shooting Of Maverick Shanks feeds everyone’s imagination.

I could even tell the truth.

Really? Well so be it, but it strikes me you got plenty to learn about your job.

Ok then I’ll tell you what really happened, with no corny “darn tootin’s” or “High Fallutin’s”.

The West I knew was disappointing.

Mainly I remember toothache, dust, saddle sores, lice and heat. Greedy, desperate, lonely men and toothless, pox-ridden whores.

I was there to make a fortune but soon learned that the real money was elsewhere.

That morning I was just another ragged scarecrow in the main street of Dodgewood. Marshall Hughes was the sheriff, employed to do the dirty work for Wade McCarthy the landowner. For him “Cleaning up the town” meant removing all opposition. Hughes was a small-time grifter like me, but with a badge. Shiftiest fellow I ever met. Now he’s a national hero thanks to yours truly.

Shanks was a poor farmer who’d been moved off his land by McCarthy. Only the devil and I know how he got his reputation as a gunslinger.

Anyhow, He’d got drunk the night before and made some idle threats in the saloon.

I got offered money to be in the posse to run him out of town.

Hughes, me and maybe five other men found Shanks lying alone in a doorway sleeping off his drink. The “twenty desperados at his side” were added for the Washington Post years later, then it got written in the song, now you can’t unsay it. Marshall kicked him. Shanks jumped up, took a hammer from his pocket and rushed at Hughes threatening him with a “nailing”. They started kicking and biting like small boys but Marshall Hughes’s gun went off in his hand. The bullet went straight through his own forehead. At this point the others ran but I stayed to calm Shanks down. He came rushing on me with his stupid hammer and I shot him dead in self-defence. Only man I ever killed.

I went to Wade McArthy for a reward and he tried to make me sheriff, but by this time I’d had enough, he gave me 50 dollars and I got the train back East the next day.

So that’s it Miss Melrose, all that occurred.

What’s that? You’ve changed your mind? Very wise!

Well then Missy, let’s begin again! You Ready? The dying testimony of Slim Dooley, the last Western hero.

The bartender slipped another whiskey down the bar as I waited for the arrival of Marshall William Hughes, finest lawman in the West. Outside tumbleweed blew down the street and nothing could be heard except the creaking of the swing doors…… “

This isn’t how I saw my life going. Three years of drama school and five years of hand to mouth bar tending and auditioning, all to wind up trapped in the rewarding world of children’s parties. I’m telling you, sheriffs in the Wild West had it easier – what did they have to deal with? Cattle rustlers? Drunks? Some off his face prospector carving up Miss Kitty a mite? Naw, I’m telling you pardner, ain’t got nothing on the wild west of kiddie parties.

And that’s before you even take into account Carl, my overbearing brother in law. He is untrained (as he keeps reminding me). He didn’t need three years of poncing about school to get him where he is now. He has a three-bed house whereas I have a one bed sit, if I’m lucky. Oh yeah, and he’s the boss. He is the boss of me, my idiot brother-in-law who is five years younger than I am.

It’s not all bad, I suppose. Luckily, he handles most of the parties by himself, he has the natural talent (he keeps telling me). They’re kids. They want balloon animals and clowns, not Chekov and Shakespeare and all those other losers. I answer the phone. I take the bookings, I fetch his lunch, oh yeah, and I’m his driver too. Which means – joy of joys – that I get to drive him across town through the early evening rush hour as he practices his latest “character” that he managed to come up with all by himself without wasting the best years of his life at drama school.

He must think I’m an idiot – the guy has clearly modelled himself on the sheriff from the Toy Story films, right down to the sayings he mutters – there’s a new sheriff in town!, or, Giddy-up partner!. He looks the part though, a fine Stetson on his head, tassels on his shirt right about at nipple level. A good patina of dust across his boots really lends a sense of realism to the outfit that I know will rile the audience into limb tearing excitement.

He gets out of the car, takes a step away and then pauses for one last run through. I manage to get his window down just in time to here him say the line, Howdy folks, I’m Sheriff Woody.

I have to bite my lower lip hard to stop myself bursting into cheers of laughter.

It’s nail biting, waiting there in the car for him to finish. I use the time to practice looking at myself in the rear-view mirror, and I’m pretty good, it has to be said. Finally, all those years of drama school are paying off, and I actually sound sincere when I say the line, oh….a hen party! I thought she said it was a Ben party. You know, party for Ben. Boy, is my face red…

The taste is vile and fills Katie’s mouth, trickling down under her tongue and sticking to the back of her throat. Her stomach objects strenuously and for a few horrifying, nail biting seconds she thinks it is going to bounce back out onto the bar.

She stands absolutely still for a moment, palms sweating praying the nausea will pass. It does. The room swims back into focus, loud and hot and intrusive. She looks up, eyes watering and a boy in a Sheriff's badge shoots her a sympathetic half smile across the bar. She tries, and fails to return it.

Sharon is dancing on the table now, the tassels on her cropped cowboy shirt flapping in time to Steps’ 5,6,7,8 and her neat, flat midriff is exposed to the delight of the crowd. Behind her, the giant cardboard cactus trembles precariously and a boy in a ten-gallon hat is ready to rescue Sharon if she falls. Katie stumbles away because Sharon’s boots are too small on her feet. But no-one is there to rescue her.

She never enjoys these Union events. They are always the same people in different cheap outfits drinking the same cheap spirits trying to shag or avoid one another by turn. But what can she do? Wait at the house again for Sharon to roll in with a boy or a group of shit-faced friends and wake her up at 4am?

So Katie buys a cheap felt stetson, lets Sharon dust her with glitter, plaster her in sticky foundation and eyelash glue and tells herself that Kate-No-Mates has been left behind with high school. Here she is Katie and Katie goes to parties and dances till dawn and drinks shots of sambuca till she nearly throws up. Katie doesn’t need rescuing. Katie is cool, Katie has friends, Katie has fun.

Except none of that is true. She is miserable in this too hot room in her too tight clothes. Above all things she would like for someone to sweep her up and take her away back to a cool quiet place where they could talk about books and never think about 5,6,7,8 ever again. But no-one wants to ride to Katie’s aid any more than they wanted to ride to Kate’s.

So Katie sits in a corner waiting for sunrise to save her, checking her watch and wondering if it’s too soon for another trip to the ladies, when she sees the boy in the Sheriff's badge again. He is sitting in the corner opposite hers, nursing a pint of watery lager. He looks as miserable as she does.

He looks, she decides, like someone who needs rescuing.

She throws a glance at Sharon, who dragged her here, now surrounded by admirers. She stares around at the disintegrating paper decorations strewn around the room. She looks down at herself; Kate wearing Katie’s clothing, dressed up like someone she doesn’t recognise.

Then she stands up, pushes her way through the sweating, throbbing dance floor to the boy in the Sheriff’s badge and decides to rescue them both.

This is Fort Collins, Colorado. It is in the west and once it was a wild, nothing more than a scrub of dusty bushes and a spring. The pioneers came and built a wooden fort to protect them from the natives and better enable effective massacre. Then more people passed by on their way westwards and some stayed, first under canvass and then in timber buildings. Once the railway arrived the new town brought in stone and craftsmen to build a fine wide thoroughfare of handsome storefronts, hotels and town houses. Now it is not wild at all. It is dull and pleasant.

Betty Shoemaker is as dull and pleasant as the town. Right now she is reckoning her portion of life, as she sits at her table with a nice slice of pie and a glass of iced tea. She lives in a sleepy street just off the main road. The house is set back with a wire fence and a driveway in which she parks the beast, an oversized Chevrolet, brown and battered and much too big for such a small old lady. She has to prop herself up on cushions to see over the wheel on the three outings she allows herself each week.

Ever Saturday she drives up to Cache le Poudre, a canyon 20 miles out of town that was used as a hiding place for ammunition by an outlaw gang of yesteryear. Her daddy used to own a small holding up there and whilst it is long gone Betty still makes a weekly pilgrimage to the old place. On Sundays she takes the car to church, an evangelist modernist monstrosity with a preacher in a three-piece suit and a wide tie who grips her hand and bellows “do you know the lord is your saviour!”. It is never a question. The third outing for Betty is to the store, for groceries on a Monday. The rest of the time Betty stays at home with her husband Ethan.

Bettys house is very dark inside. In her sitting room is the large oak table at which she sits. It is covered in a heavy brown velvet cloth, edged with beige tassels. Against one wall is a piano, above which is a faded yet treasured rendition of Jesus with blue eyes and a beatific half smile, even though he is bleeding heavily from his stigmata. Betty looks at Ethan where he sits in a brown leather armchair, dressed in a buttoned-up shirt and high waisted tweeds. He dribbles constantly onto his shirt front and occasionally gets up, giggles and walks out of the room. Sometimes for a change he will shove all his fingers into his mouth and gnaw at his nails until they bleed. Betty has passed the stage of trying to stop him doing any of this. He is a dam cussed old fella.

Betty is the only one who knows that Ethan had been a genuine cowboy, a rodeo rider who made enough of a living to get them this house, before one fall too many.

She blesses him for that every morning and prays every night that he will soon die.

As she sits and considers her slice of pie Betty knows it could be better but it washes down perfectly nicely when all is said and done. Thank you, Jesus.