Ghost Town: A Novel by Robert Coover

Wedding gifts, he assumes, or else winnings from a bet, no doubt the one he’s lost, a remark he makes to his deputy, who says: Naw, sheriff. Haw. It’s fer yer weddin night. She’s chargin admission.
    They aint gonna be nuthin t’see, he grumps, and the deputy laughs at that, showing the gaps in his tobacco-stained teeth.
    She did tell us it might be sumthin of a skin game, he says.
    This un’s fer yu, darlin! calls out the chanteuse, perching herself knees-up on the piano, whereupon the piano player, an earless pipe-smoking mestizo in white pajamas, strikes up a tune, and she sings him a love song about busting an unbustable bronc, the men who have hoisted him down here holding him up in front of the exuberant assembly in his buckskin shirt and gaping pink bloomers like an illustration. Not of an unbustable bronc—he’s shriveled up with pain and chagrin, his wrists are still bound, his legs leaden and useless, his heart’s in his boots—but of the unsavory consequences of excess civilizing. After that excitement, the preacher sets his bowler on his bald head, bangs his Bible on the bar, and calls them all forward to the tall wheel of fortune: Brang some chairs and take yer seats, gents! The blessed cerymonies is about t’commensurate!
    Chairs and tables scrape on the wooden floor. The pajama’d mestizo, puffing away on his cob pipe, bangs out a kind of march tune which sounds like a horse race or else a runaway train, while he’s dragged up to be stood alongside Belle. Hlo, handsome, she whispers and tweaks his more exposed features. There’s a preparatory chorus throughout the saloon of throat-clearing and spitting, belching, farting, and what’s either praying or cursing, and then the preacher hawks up a glomeration that rings a whitewashed spittoon a few yards away and announces: Hiyo, dear brothers and sister, we are foregathered here in most dreadful and holy joy t’harness up the sheriff to our beloved Belle, and so set him in the softest saddle in the whole damn Terrortory as I’m shore yu’ll all concur!
    The men shout and cheer and stamp their feet—Aymen t’thet, parson! Praise be!—and the chanteuse blushes and smiles coyly at them over her shoulder. Then she takes his near hand and claps it to her hip and says, I do! I do!
    Hole on, sugarbun, says the preacher, lowering his monocle. We aint t’thet part a the proceedins yet.
    Well hurry it up, revrend, she cries. I’m jest gushin out all over! And she wheels round to plant a kiss on him, throwing one leg over his bloomered hipbone and rubbing herself there, setting off a burst of hooting and whistling and the wild smashing of bottles against the white-sheeted walls.
    His bad leg buckles under her weight, and the top-hatted bumpkin, holding him up with his one arm, grunts: Brace up yer carkiss, sheriff! Show a little brass’n grit thar, like whut yu’re famous fer.
    I aint famous fer nuthin, he gasps as the parson pulls the chanteuse off him and helps her smooth her skirts out. Cept locatin trouble mebbe.
    Haw. Yu’re a card, sheriff, says his deputy, spitting voluminously on the floor and stomping it with his pegleg as though it were something alive. I think yu musta overdid it at yer stag party.
    Whut stag party?
    Yer stag party. Y’know, on accounta gittin spliced.
    But I aint had no stag party.
    Wait a minnit, says the other fellow. Yu aint had no stag party?
    Whut’s this? asks the parson, adjusting the monocle in his eye.
    The sheriff, says the deputy. He aint had no stag party!
    This causes a general consternation and the chanteuse, looking a bit desperate, says: It dont matter! He kin have one tomorra! He kin have a whole dang slew of em!
    Now Belle, he caint git married without a stag party, says his deputy. Them’s the rules.
    Aw shit, says Belle glumly, and she kicks over a white spittoon with such vehemence she sets all the little bones in the place to rattling.
    Whuddayu figger, revrend? asks the oldtimer.
    I figger we