Killing Mr. Sunday Read online

  Killing Mr. Sunday

  Bill Brooks

  Jake Horn was on the dodge for a crime he didn't commit when the town of Sweet Sorrow took him in and rewarded him with a badge he didn't want. Still, this out-of-the-way Dakota hellhole is a good place for a man to get lost in.

  For Jessica and Johnny Flores,

  offspring of the Gods . . .

  1

  Roy Bean was mixing a cocktail of his own

  concoction—something he referred to as Mexican

  Widow—and prognosticating the changing seasons.

  “The wooly worms is black as a smashed thumb,

  and the chickens are all molting, and the spiders’ webs

  is thick as twine. Boys, it is going to be a bad winter

  that befalls us, and I for one am heading back south be-

  fore it does.”

  This came as a major surprise to the men drinking

  with Roy Bean in the Three Aces. Roy Bean had ar-

  rived in town that previous spring and established

  himself as somewhat Sweet Sorrow’s honorary mayor

  and jurist. He had been instrumental in forming a

  town committee made up of more than saloon owners

  and whores to set the wheels to civilization in motion

  once the old crowd had been swept out in a hail of

  bullets, namely two lawmen of bad reputations.

  One of the bullet deliverers was standing at the far

  end of the oak sipping coffee—Jake Horn. Jake had

  killed the previous city police, had shot them fore and

  aft with the help of a half-breed Mandan Frenchman

  named Toussaint Trueblood. The two police that Jake

  and Toussaint had put under the sod were Bob Olive

  and his deputy Teacup Smith, a pair of corrupt souls

  who, when not riding roughshod over the locals, were

  off in other counties performing as robbers of banks,

  individuals, and almost anything that moved that

  looked like it had a dollar attached to it.

  Jake hadn’t shot them for no reason, as they had

  done him when they first came upon him. Shot and

  robbed him and left him for dead. But dead didn’t

  work out as they’d planned it and Toussaint True-

  blood had found the man and brought him into Sweet

  Sorrow figuring the white people there would be de-

  cent enough to bury one of their own at the very least.

  But Jake survived his wounds and as things most

  sometimes happen in such dire circumstances, came

  round full circle and justice was served in its own pe-

  culiar way—frontier justice.

  What most didn’t know, but what Roy Bean and

  Toussaint Trueblood suspected, was that Jake Horn

  wasn’t exactly as he represented himself. And indeed,

  he wasn’t. Other circumstances, or some might call it

  fate, had arrived him in Sweet Sorrow. Fate being in

  the form of a conniving woman named Celine Shaw,

  whom Jake—or as he was known as then, Tristan

  Shade, physician—was in love with. The problem was

  that the lady in question was married—something

  that caused Jake, né Tristan Shade, to go against his

  Hippocratic oath and violate even his personal ethics.

  He fell fool for her, and in the end he paid the price of

  most such fools. It was she who pulled the trigger on

  her husband and blamed Jake for it. And it was he

  who ended up running for his life, not her. The alias

  was that of a now-late uncle whom Jake was bound to

  hide out with way up in Canada. Bob Olive and

  Teacup Smith put a change in his plans. And some

  would say, he put a change in theirs also.

  The irony of all this was that having rubbed out the

  duo, Jake was induced to take over the dead men’s job.

  He was reluctant to stick around and eager still to make

  the border. But eventually he succumbed to the fast-

  talking Roy Bean, who in spite of his bombast tended

  to make sense half the time, like when he suggested that

  Jake might be better hid in plain sight, as a lawman. “If,

  indeed there are those looking for you for something

  you may or may not have did in other climes,” as Roy

  delicately put it.

  Jake let his beard and hair grow and with a new

  name and wearing a badge and residing in such a far-

  flung frontier town as Sweet Sorrow, it seemed at

  least possible he might avoid detection by either fed-

  eral marshals or any private detectives the family of

  the dead man might hire. Thus far it had worked out

  pretty fair.

  He listened with only mild interest as Roy Bean

  now went on about what a bad winter was coming.

  “Snow will come so deep one Indian standing on

  the shoulders of another will be buried up to his hat.

  Men’s limbs will bust off from the cold. You won’t be

  able to take a piss without it freezing to the end of

  your whistle. I’ve heard tales of horrors from cow-

  boys who survived and made it to Texas. Most

  claimed they’d never winter again in the Dakotas.”

  Such predictions were hard to believe, for the cur-

  rent weather was quite balmy after the previous

  month of September being little more than cold rain

  and several ice storms. Indian summer the locals

  called it. Best enjoy it while you can.

  “No sir, I’m heading back down to Texas, to my

  Maria and my lovely brats, all five or six of them . . .”

  Roy paused in his oratory only long enough to add

  a bit more gin to his Mexican Widow, tasted it and

  then smacked his lips in approval.

  “What’s in that box?” Tall John the undertaker

  said, nodding at the small leather-strapped box one of

  Roy’s feet rested upon.

  “My worldly possessions,” he replied. “Every-

  thing I own is in that grip: two striped shirts, a pair of

  checkered trousers, bone-handled razor, cigar box full

  of Indian Head pennies I’ve been saving for my

  youngsters, and Mr. Blackstone’s law book. Might

  even be a Bible in there as well, I can’t remember

  rightly if there is or not.”

  “Who will be mayor, and who the judge with you

  gone?” Otis Dollar, the merchant asked.

  “Why, Otis, you can be mayor, and Tall John, you

  can be the judge.”

  “Don’t know nothing about the law,” Tall John

  said. “All I know about is the dead.”

  “Sometimes you have to judge when a man is to

  live and when he is to die,” Roy Bean said. Ten o’-

  clock and already half in his cups and beginning to

  sound profound.

  “I could be mayor easily enough,” Otis said, ad-

  miring the idea in his head.

  “You boys could flip a dime and decide who’s who

  and what’s to be what. I hate to leave you high and dry

  like this, but I got a letter from my Maria just yester-

  day and it was writ in her usual Mexican jibberish—

  which I ain’t yet learned to decipher, but it seemed
to

  me by its brevity that she is highly put out with me,

  and I’m afraid if I don’t return to her soon she’ll leave

  me for some vaquero down there on the pampas and

  take my brats with her. I admire them kids, I truly do

  and would hate to see them end up in some poor ca-

  ballero’s hovel eating nothing but frijoles and fry

  bread and being worked like mules.”

  Roy sidled down to where Jake stood, Jake in the

  middle of a personal reverie about the woman who

  had done him wrong; odd thing was, he was thinking,

  he still loved her. What is it gets into a man’s head and

  his heart would make him still love a woman who’d

  betrayed him in the worst way, he wondered. He

  didn’t know. I had the answer to that one, I’d be the

  smartest man alive and there is no such thing.

  “Can I mix you one of these Mexican Widows?”

  Roy Bean said. His eyes glittered like a dance hall

  girl’s who’d put too many drops of belladonna in

  them.

  “No, too early of the day for me, Judge.”

  “How you settling in, son?”

  “Other than that original business,” Jake said, re-

  ferring to the shootings of primarily Bob Olive and

  Deputy Smith, “it’s been something of a cakewalk.”

  “Ain’t that what I told you it would be, easy as

  herding dogs.”

  “You did.”

  “Town like this, you don’t get too many bad actors.

  Bad actors all tend to drift toward the big cities and the

  lawless places—Miles City, Dallas, and Tombstone—

  places like that where there is more mischief to be had.

  Sweet Sorrow ain’t nowhere near any of them in the

  mischief department—might not ever be and the town

  might be the better for it if it never gets as cosmopoli-

  tan. Still, I will admit, that once in a great while or so,

  bad actors—like old Bob and Teacup and some of

  them others, tend to find out even far-flung places like

  this . . .”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Roy Bean leaned in close so none of the others

  might hear.

  “It’s been nearly five months now and if they was

  sending anybody else after you, don’t you think

  they’d come by now?”

  Without admitting to anything, Jake said, “The

  world is full of surprises; I’ve always felt it better to

  be prepared for the worst.”

  “These folks here’d back you, I do believe, no mat-

  ter what it is you may have done in the past. Being

  here, doing what you do for them. And I don’t mean

  just jailing the drunks and breaking up fisticuffs, I’m

  talking about how you doctor them, too . . .”

  Jake waved his hand.

  “I don’t doctor them,” he said. “I just help like

  anybody would with what little I know.”

  “Okay, we’re clear on that. But whatever it is

  you’re doing for them, they appreciate it and I don’t

  think they’d just stand by and let some yahoo ride in

  here and spirit you away without putting up a fuss

  and a fight.”

  “Maybe so,” Jake said. “But the way I look at it,

  why bring trouble down on them that don’t deserve it.”

  Roy tossed back the rest of his cocktail, took a fore-

  finger and swiped it inside the glass and sucked the

  taste off.

  “Who knows,” he said, “maybe I’ll make it back

  up this way some time or other if things don’t work

  out in Texas, bring Maria and them brats with me,

  and become a settled-down man. I could get a bear

  coat and wear it and not go out when the weather

  turns freezing . . .”

  “Maybe,” Jake said.

  The two men walked to the double doors together,

  Roy carrying his grip under his arm. It was snowing.

  “Look it,” Roy said. “Ain’t it what I said? Early

  snow, just a foretaste of things to come. You’ll see.”

  It was hardly a real snow; just a few flakes tum-

  bling from a gray sky that reminded them of an old

  rumpled blanket.

  “Taste that air,” Roy said. “Like the taste of a

  metal pail: cold and hard. Them wooly worms was

  right, and so were them chickens and spiders. Crea-

  tures know things humans can’t. The geese has all

  flown south and I intend to be flying south, too. Stick

  my feet in the Rio Grande and wash my hair in it, too.

  I miss my sweet Maria, that plump brown body of

  hers and all it offers a man. I even miss my brats a lit-

  tle, Octavio and them.”

  Jake walked across the street with Roy Bean, to

  the front of Otis Dollar’s mercantile where the noon

  stage would stop. Otis’s wife was out front standing

  under the overhang watching it snow. Her pinched

  face was nearly hidden by the poke bonnet. She wore

  a dark blue capote around her shoulders. What they

  could see of her eyes showed a contempt for the

  weather.

  “Morning, Missus Dollar,” Roy Bean said touch-

  ing the brim of his broad sombrero. She could see he

  was about drunk, the way he walked uncertain. She

  did not care for the man, and made no pretenses that

  she did. She looked at him, then went back to looking

  at the falling snow.

  “Now you don’t have to wonder why Otis is as

  nervous as a whipped mule,” Roy Bean said softly

  and out of earshot he hoped of the woman. “Otis

  needs to take charge of that, set her to right thinking

  again or else he’s going to live out whatever life he has

  left in him feeling like every day somebody’s hammer-

  ing his brains out.”

  It was while waiting for the stage that they spotted

  the Swede’s woman riding atop the rickety seat of a

  weather-beaten buckboard whose sides rattled with

  every turn of the wheels. The rig was pulled by a

  sorrowful-looking old animal whose hipbones slid

  back and forth under its motley hide as it walked.

  “That’s that Swede’s woman, ain’t it?” Roy said.

  “One whose daughter was fooling with Toussaint’s

  boy when that wild kid shot him to pieces?”

  “Inge Kunckle,” Jake said. He’d been with Tous-

  saint the day they’d found his son shot dead and lying

  in grass whose stems were blood splattered. The girl,

  Gerthe Kunckle, had been taken by the boy after the

  shooting. Jake and Toussaint had caught up with

  them a short time later and took him and her under

  their command. Toussaint’s ex-wife, Karen Sun-

  flower, had suffered the news hard.

  “Wonder why she’s alone and not with that man

  and them brood of kids?” Roy wondered aloud,

  watching the woman steer her wagon toward them.

  She seemed to know right where she wanted to go,

  and stopped there in the street dead in front of them.

  “I like to speak to you, Marshal.”

  Jake walked over, placed a hand atop the wheel.

  “What is it?”

  “My Gerthe,” she said.

  “What about her?” />
  “I think maybe she’s dying.”

  “I’m not a doctor, you understand.”

  She nodded.

  “I think maybe she’s passed a child out of her.”

  “You mean she aborted?”

  “Just a little bloody thing you can’t tell nothing

  much about. I wrapped it in a towel and buried it, but

  Gerthe, she’s still bleeding. All her color is gone. She

  don’t eat. I think maybe another day or two and I

  have to bury her, too.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Jake said, telling her to turn

  her wagon around and head back.

  She did so without another word.

  “What’s shaking?” Roy said.

  “I’ve got to go,” Jake said.

  “You be careful around that old man,” Roy said.

  “Some say he’s crazy as a bedbug. I don’t know it to

  be true, but if enough say a thing about a person, you

  can pretty much bet there’s some truth to it in there

  somewhere.”

  “Have a good trip back to Texas,” Jake said. They

  shook hands and parted ways, both men believing

  they’d never see the other again, but without any real

  sentiment, either.

  Jake got the medical bag, property of the late Doc

  Willis. Until another physician decided to settle in

  Sweet Sorrow, Jake figured to make use of Doc’s med-

  icines and equipment. The house Doc lived in stood

  vacant, waiting to be sold, but nobody in Sweet Sor-

  row could afford such a manse, and so it stood, fully

  furnished down to its red drapes and French furni-

  ture, and a treatment room for patients, waiting for

  new ownership. As the town’s lawman, Jake held the

  keys to the place and used it when necessary, like the

  time he had to remove a hacksaw blade from Dice

  Thompson’s gullet—Dice, stone-eyed drunk, made a

  bet he could swallow the thing for he’d seen a man in

  a circus once swallow a sword, two of them in fact,

  but it became stuck in his windpipe and he could nei-

  ther swallow it or expectorate it.

  Jake had some of the men carry Dice over to Doc’s

  and put him on the examine table where Jake chloro-

  formed him and finally got the blade removed. Dice

  still had a raspy voice. It was that sort of thing that

  brought folks to Jake. He’d had to make up lies about

  his skills—telling them he wasn’t a real doctor, just

  somebody who’d learned a little something as an or-