The Ballad of Dingus Magee by David Markson

I’m damned,” Belle said. “You mean to say—because I’ve been offered twenty in my time, and once fifty, too, but that doesn’t count since the varmint didn’t have the cash to start with. But this is—”
    “No,” Hoke said. “You got the wrong idea, I jest mean—”
    But Hoke did not get to explain. Because what suddenly happened then, what was already starting to happen even as he spoke, could not possibly have astonished or confused him more. Belle Nops abruptly swallowed once, then a second time, standing with one hand lifted to her immemorial bosom. Then the bosom heaved, and her face became contorted, and the swallowing became a series of ragged, inarticulate sobs. “A thousand dollars?” she choked. “A thousand?”
    “Well, yair,” Hoke said, “but I don’t see no reason fer—”
    And then Belle Nops was weeping. Tears flooded down her painted cheeks, beyond any control. “Oh, Birdsill,” she cried, “you mean after six months you’re that desperate? You truly missed me so much that—”
    “Huh?”
    “Never,” she sobbed, “never! No man has ever cared that much before. And to think that I made you suffer so long, let your heart break for all this time!”
    So now it was Hoke who had commenced to swallow, clutching his derby and stumbling backward against the door. “But—”
    Moaning, her incredible bosom rising and falling, she lurched after him. Her eyes were wet, they gleamed. “A thousand dollars! In thirty-nine long years, never once have I been so deeply touched! Keep your money, keep it! I’m yours for nothing! Because I’ve missed you too! Oh, my sweetie, I’ve pined for you so!”
    Hoke stumbled against a large stuffed chair, going over. “But I jest wanted to stay for—for—”
    “Yes, stay—stay forever! We’ll get married, now, tonight! Because it’s so romantic I could…”
    Hoke did not quite scream.
    “Because I’ve always loved you,” she cried. “From the very beginning!”
    “But—but—all them names you used to call me, every time we—”
    “Oh, you foolish, foolish boy, didn’t you understand? It was because a girl can’t be the one to say it, and you yourself were so blind, so blind! But what does the past matter now? What does anything matter? Oh, to think, at last— Missies Hoke Birdsill! Oh, my own sweetie pie—”
    Flowing open, her robe enveloped him. The astonishing bosom unfurled like gonfalons loosed, like melons in dehiscence. But Hoke saw not, partook not. He had already fainted.

5

    “We were drove to it, sir.”
Cole Younger
    At times like these, Dingus had to wonder where he had gone astray. “You old mule-sniffer,” he asked himself thoughtfully, alone in the jail, “jest what is it, anyway, makes you so bad?”
    But he believed he knew, really. “It’s because I never had me a mother,” he decided, “to guide me onto the correct paths of life.”
    For that matter he had never had a father either, or not for long, nor was his name actually Magee. He had been born William Dilinghaus but he had not been able to pronounce that, not when he was first old enough to understand that something else went with the Billy, and Dingus had been the result when he tried. Magee was a cousin. “You might as well call yourself whatever suits your liking,” he had told the boy. “Because there ain’t nothing else gonter come easy in this world, and that’s the gospel.”
    On the other hand he did believe he remembered his father faintly, a short, pink-lidded man with hunched shoulders and gone prematurely to fat, and would dream of him from time to time. In the dream his father was ways sitting at a table, dealing cards. Then his head would jerk upright suddenly, as if worked by a bit between his jaws, and a small reddening hole would appear in the center of his forehead.
    The cousin denied that Dingus could recall any such thing. “Because you was too young,” he insisted. “Lissen, you weren’t but two when I got the