Fantastic Shorts

Seven Hundred and Seventy-Six-2

“Don’t kill me,” Floyd pleaded, “please Mr. McKay. If it’s money you want, I know the combination to the safe.” Floyd would have to hope that whatever was in there would satisfy him.

There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t be killed afterwards, but it was a play for time. Time to think. The only time available right now.

“I told you. I want you to buy this gun for seven hundred-and-seventy-six dollars.”

Floyd stared at him. His lips parted slightly. He was unsure of what to say, so he said nothing.

“Please,” McKay said quietly as if to no one in particular. “Open the doors, get the money, and buy this gun.” Pain was evident in his words.

Floyd mustered a reply, trying to sound braver than he felt, but his voice cracked as well. “Mr. McKay, I’ll open these doors, open the safe, turn the whole place upside down for you. But I’m telling you right now, we don’t have even a quarter of that amount of money right now.”

The madman released a huge laugh mixed with a howl. It echoed across the street and through the tiny alleyways. He shook his head and looked at the ground. “I know, I know,” he said. To Floyd, it looked like he was talking more to the revolver than to him. “Time’s run out,” he finished.

So this was it, Floyd thought. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. God, I hope it doesn’t hurt.

“You ain’t gonna tell me what to do no more!” McKay yelled. Floyd was trying to process just what he meant by that when the shot went off and his ears rang to the high heavens. Floyd screamed, or thought he did, and collapsed onto the ground.

He wondered, where had it hit? The chest? His head? He couldn’t feel anything. Only the stiff slats on which he fell upon. He’d never been shot before so he could only guess.

After what felt like an eternity, Floyd peeked through squinted eyes and breathed in deeply. He shot up and ran his hands over his face, his skull, his body. Looking for any indication of slippery blood or something out of place.

Nothing.

Nothing but Mr. McKay lying on the dirt, in the very spot where he had just been standing. His head was lolled to the side like a rag doll, his eyes staring lifelessly at the wall of the bank. Fresh blood covered his matted beard and mangled jaw.

Floyd looked around, bewildered, but something caught his eye. It glinted in the dirt next to McKay’s open hand.

A revolver.

A flintlock revolver.

Clearly it was not the rusted junk that had been in McKay’s hand previously, though it in fact looked like the very same model. Yet this one’s silver was gleaming in the moonlight, looking as if it had just been polished. There were no signs of wear on the varnished, deep brown handle. Floyd crawled over to the dead man, his legs still unable to hold him upright. His eyes remained focused on the gun. It seemed to be pulling Floyd into its ethereal orbit.

He questioned, had this been the one he really shot at me with? It didn’t make sense. Floyd clearly saw McKay holding a worthless relic in his hand before he closed his eyes.

If Floyd Usher ever did anything boldly, it was as a result of his relentless curiosity. He reached out and felt the gun. As his fingers touched the handle, his head darted around and he searched the darkness. He could have swore he heard something, somebody, breathing a deep sigh of relief.

* * *

“You killed a man?” she asked. Jinnie’s voice betrayed her incredulity.

Breathless, Floyd attempted to explain. “No, I didn’t. He tried to kill me. McKay. He was...earlier...in the bank...I...I think he killed himself.”

She stood there in thick cotton pajamas, her long red hair tied into a tail running down her back. Heat radiated from the wood stove and filled the room. There were a couple of tin plates on the table, though both were dirty. A twinge of shame pulsed through Floyd. She had made supper after all.

“I don’t have the time nor patience for a wild story. I have dishes to take care of.” She began to pick up the tableware. “You know, most men would be grateful for a hot meal.”

That hurt Floyd. He was still sensitive to one of the reasons they had left Boston. Jinnie had readily admitted her ‘indiscretion,’ even started attending church with Floyd on a regular basis. But phantom pains remained even after their move. He pushed the feeling down.

“Didn’t you hear the shots?” he said, almost pleading. His frustration overtook anything else he was feeling then. “It was down by the bank!”

She said nothing, only moving to wash the dishes in the basin, treating him as if he were a boy again making up wild tales to explain to his mother why he hadn’t slopped the hogs.

Floyd paced back and forth. “I gotta go back,” he said. “McKay’s body is still down there. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe he’s really okay.” He headed towards the door, not getting very far before Jinnie was grabbing at his arm.

“You need to sit down and think about this,” she said.

A general sense of panic seemed to have overtaken Floyd that wasn’t there before, and he didn’t know why. Tonight had been a culmination of one confusing thing after another. He decided that listening to Jinnie right now might make good sense, so he took a seat.

There was a clunk on the floor.

They both looked down at the same time and saw the pistol.

“What’s that?”

“The gun,” Floyd replied almost as a question. “The one McKay was going to kill me with. I think.” He didn’t remember picking it up, but there it was.

Jinnie squinted at the gun and then looked into Floyd’s eyes, a half-smile on her lips. “You sure he was going to shoot you? I think he’d have a better chance killing you by hitting you over the head with that thing.”

“Huh?” Floyd looked down. “Well, yeah, it’s an older model, but I’m telling you the thing still works.”

Jinnie bent down to pick it up, but quickly dropped it back on the floor. “Damn, it’s heavy.”

Floyd flinched at her swearing.

She said, “Well, assuming it wouldn’t blow up in your hands, I don’t know how anyone could shoot that thing. It doesn’t even have a trigger.”

Now a panic swept back through Floyd’s body again. “What are you talking about? It’s right there.” He leaned over, picked up the gun, and cradled it in his hands. It felt oddly warm. His index finger massaged the trigger and there was something unsettlingly comfortable about it’s curve. He was reluctant to let it go.

A garbled whisper entered his ears.

“What did you say?” Floyd asked his wife.

Jinnie’s eyes were blank, but had a lightness in them. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’ve been drinking firewater down at the Coyote.”

Floyd shot up to his feet with an intensity that surprised him. “Of course not!”

She shook her head slowly. “Floyd, I don’t want to hear any more about this. I’m going to bed. If you want to go down and see the sheriff, you may as well ask if you can stay the night.”

If there was a door on the entrance to the bedroom, it would have slammed shut. Instead, Jinnie just disappeared into the darkness.

* * *

Floyd felt a pang in his conscience. He knew he couldn’t leave the man lying there. Someone would find the body and there would be a lot of questions from the sheriff; questions that might best be answered now. Knowing he’d have to deal with Jinnie later, he ran to the bank and froze as he came down the main street. He saw the back of Sheriff Bohannon. He was on one knee, leaning over Mr. McKay’s lifeless body.

Floyd’s stomach gurgled and then he looked down at himself in horror.

He was holding the gun in his hand. He wondered again how it wound up at his side.

Instinct told Floyd to turn around. He was certain now that coming back was a bad idea. He had no way of proving what happened. It was only his word against a dead man’s and though he was on the sheriff’s good side on the general account that he’d never stirred up any trouble, being possibly accused of murdering a man didn’t sit well with Floyd.

He obeyed his body’s wishes and was several steps toward home before the call came.

“Hey!”

Floyd stopped cold. He slowly slipped the gun into his right pocket, trying to be smooth about it, before he turned around.

The sheriff was standing now, looking at Floyd. His hands were on his hips.

“Gimme a hand here. I could carry this fella over to Dade’s myself, but I don’t necessarily wanna.”

Floyd approached like a wary animal and confirmed the fella was indeed Mr. McKay. His head was still a butchered mess, laying in a pool of blood that still hadn’t dried.

“Well?” Bohannon asked. He had ahold of McKay’s wrists and was nodding toward his feet.

Floyd snapped out of his reverie and shuffled towards McKay’s boots. He was glad the sheriff chose the parts closest to dead man’s head. Bile rose up to his throat and it was all he could do to keep from gagging.

“What...what happened?” Floyd asked. I sound like stuttering fool, he thought.

“A good question. Ready?”

Floyd grabbed the dead man’s ankles and nodded lightly.

They moved down the street, Floyd facing Bohannon as the sheriff walked backwards at a steady pace. Dade’s General Store was about a hundred yards away. In a town as small as Cordson, there wasn’t a specialized undertaker. That job fell on the man who could nail a box together better than others.

They crossed the front of the store and wound up in the rear.

“He always keeps an open casket out back. No sense in bothering him about it tonight, though.” Bohannon lifted a shoulder to his cheek to wipe off the sweat. “We’ll just lay the lid on it for now. Keep the coyotes from gettin’ to him til’ Dade can dip him in arsenic.”

By the time they got McKay into the box, Floyd was panting and had to sit down. He collapsed on an upside-down crate.

As he did so, the gun fell out of his pocket and thumped onto the dirt.

The sheriff looked down.

Floyd decided then and there that if he ever got out of prison, he’d have Jinnie make him pants with bigger pockets.

Bohannon squatted down and picked up the gun.

“This yours?” he asked.

Dread left Floyd with a lump in his throat.

Bohannon turned the gun over in his hand and examined it closely.

Floyd noticed his legs were nervously bouncing up and down. He concentrated on keeping them still.

The sheriff said, “Wow, a Collier. I ain’t seen one of these since my grandpappy’s, back in Virginia. Wished I had it. It was in much better shape, but I imagine it looks a lot like this one now.” He looked up at Floyd. “Where’d you get it?”

Floyd hesitated.

“Don’t remember it being this damn heavy,” Bohannon said, “but that was a long time ago.” He extended it toward Floyd who opened his palms. It fell like a stone but landed like a feather in Floyd’s hands.

The sheriff was looking at him quietly now. It unnerved Floyd. He couldn’t resist the urge to confess.

“He killed himself!” Floyd blurted out. “I swear it!”

Bohannon scrunched his eyebrows and looked back at corpse. He took a deep breath.

“Well, unless he was deliberately poisoned, which I don’t see why anyone would do that to poor Mr. McKay, there’s no doubt about that.” The sheriff winked and flashed a joker’s smile.

Floyd was taken aback. “What do you mean?” There were hundreds of subtleties to that question.

“The man came down here only last week, a smile on his face, buying people drinks down at the Coyote as sure as any newcomer that he’d pull enough out of the Santa Ritas to leave with pockets full of silver. Like many of the dreamers who come out here and keep our little town alive, he didn’t find what he was lookin’ for and he came back in a few days ago appearing worse for it.”

Bohannon shook his head.

“Anyway, I’d guess heat exhaustion. Ticker couldn’t take it. Or he had himself a little too much tornado juice, though they’re usually lying in a pile of their own puke when that’s the case.”

Floyd rose slowly and looked into the open casket. As plain as day, the bottom half of McKay’s face looked like chopped beef. Red pools of blood had already seeped into the oak.