Image copyright: Thomas Cuschieri
by Chris Longhurst
It is the Old West, and John Evil is a genius. He covets the desert, and the prairie, and the tiny communities that spring up daily like molehills. There is not a hoodoo that his eye should chance upon, but that he desires to own it. Not a fresh-flowing spring or raging torrent that he does not seek to claim.
As previously mentioned, John Evil is a genius. He questions his own motivations–just why would a wealthy, intelligent man seek to dominate the natural world so?–and finds precious little. Just the creeping sensation that he treads heavily upon a very thin floor, over a very deep pit. John Evil does not sleep well at night.
But he’s evil! So that’s okay.
You may have heard that John Evil is a genius. He eschews the cramped laboratories and filth of his contemporaries in favour of a spacious office in a town hall, and the trappings of a fine gentleman. Let the other geniuses of the day toil over forges and inhale toxic chemicals from bubbling beakers; John applies his intellect to economics, migration patterns, sociology, psychology. If there was an Evil Genius Rotary Club, he would be the social secretary and everyone would come to his events.
But he keeps a robotic killing machine in the stables of his ranch, just to show that he can build with the best of them. At night he can hear its joints hiss as it shifts, hear the murmur of the black magic that powers its bloodthirsty intelligence, see the dim red glow of its five eye-lamps shining from around the stable door.
I believe John’s difficulty sleeping has been mentioned?
John sits in his spacious office and signs papers. A cigar smoulders in an ashtray close at hand. With a stroke of his pen, John recalls a dozen loans–a dozen homes that will soon be his, for whatever purpose he might confabulate.
His handwriting is the very definition of ‘spidery’.
Orders are given. Minions are dispatched. John leans back in his chair and drags on his cigar. His wary eye catches sight of the lone minion still in the room. The man looks uneasy; John has given him nothing to do, which is a new experience for both of them.
“What’s your name?” John asks. He strokes his oiled goatee with one hand; the other waves the cigar aimlessly, tracing meaningless symbols in smoke.
“Cranston,” Cranston says. He wonders if his life is about to end. He wonders when, exactly, his life began. Could he have been created ex nihilo moments before, and all his history only fabricated memories?
Cranston is a man in the grip of an existential crisis.
“Why are you still here, Cranston?”
This is not a good question to ask a man in the grip of an existential crisis. Cranston stammers an unintelligible response.
“Of course, I haven’t given you anything to do,” John muses. “I wonder why not.”
In his mind, thin floorboards creak and bow. He can see an infinite darkness through the cracks.
“Do you ever get the feeling, Cranston, that you’re just a playing piece in somebody else’s game?”
Cranston, who is consumed by the fear that his entire existence is a brief temporary state to serve the purposes of a distant and mysterious god, decides that John’s statement approximates his feelings well enough.
“Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes.”
#
It is an older version of the Old West. A young John Evil is making his first fortune on the railroads–designing and facilitating, of course; he would never dream of driving a pile himself.
Raven-Digging is a wise man, a native of these lands that the pale-skinned invaders so cheerfully claim as their own. He knows that no man can own the land, that it is the domain of the spirits that inhabit every hill, every promontory, every animal. He has lived in harmony with the land, giving and taking in equal measure, for his entire life–which has been a long time now. His face is lined. His hair is starting to grey.
It is spoken that Raven-Digging is wise. He questions his own motivations and where he is unsure he sees the hands of the spirits, moving events to suit their own alien agendas. In the dark of the night he lies awake, his wife nestled against him in peaceful slumber, and he wonders how far those spiritual hands reach into his own self. Is free will possible for the spiritual man?
He sleeps better than John Evil though. A loving family and healthy work in the outdoors will do that for you.
If you ask the wind, it will tell you that Raven-Digging is wise. That might not be the answer to the question you have asked, but that is what you get for asking the wind. Raven-Digging applies his wisdom in all areas of his life, as a wise man ought. He has been sent to speak to the railroad man because he is trusted to handle anything that might arise. If there is peace to be had, Raven-Digging will find it. If it is to be war, Raven-Digging will fight it.
Not by himself, mind you–part of wisdom is knowing when to go alone, and when to bring a score of armed men.
Raven-Digging stands at the driving point of the railroad. All around him, progress is suspended mid-construction. Nearby one of the colossal iron horses steams and hisses, and Raven-Digging can understand why some of his people might take it to be a living thing. Behind it, the rails stretch in a straight line to the horizon. A young John Evil dismounts from the locomotive, holding his black bowler hat onto his head with one hand. Raven-Digging notes the gun at his belt.
“I’m John Evil,” John says. “Is there a reason why you’re blocking the progress of my railroad?”
He is young, Raven-Digging reminds himself. Impetuous. Impulsive.
“You are driving towards sacred ground,” he says. “If you do not go around, the spirits there will take a terrible vengeance upon you and your people.”
“The spirits?” says John. “Or you?”
“The spirits,” says Raven-Digging. “Where the railroad is headed there are things living under the hills, small and quick and stronger than they look. They are hard enough to placate when a single hunter trespasses onto their territory; I cannot think they will react well to… this.”
He gestures at the iron horse, shrouded in its own exhalations.
John considers this. He has seen the plans for a robotic killing machine powered by steam and black magic: he will not dismiss talk of things out of hand.
“The new must ever displace the old,” he says at last. “Let your things do their worst.”
Raven-Digging turns to leave, concerned at the terrible fate that will befall these newcomers. His unhappiness is brief, however, as John Evil shoots him in the back.
John stands over the Indian, smoking gun in hand, and watches him die. One of the workers summons the courage to ask him why he did it. John shrugs.
“It’s the sort of thing I do,” he says, affecting a levity about the matter that he does not feel. “Betrayal, murder, exploitation. The creation of conflict.”
John retreats from the question, but will return to it time and again in the dark of the night. Thin floorboards and a long drop below.
The railroad skewers the sacred land–in and out, a spiritual arrow to slay a spiritual place. The only thing to befall John Evil is more money which, he laughs over brandy with the other evil geniuses, shows just how useless these savage ghosts are.
Two hours later he loses the railroad in a game of cards, but that is almost certainly nothing more than careless gambling.
#
It is the New Old West again, and Curtis Sawyer is a wandering man. He rides the desert, and the prairie, and visits the tiny communities that spring up daily like molehills. There is not a hoodoo that he has not seen. Not a fresh-flowing spring or raging torrent that he has not forded.
But he is not alone! Horses named for the letter ‘S’ are kings and queens among their kind: Shadowfax, Silver, Seabiscuit. Sawyer’s steed is named Salacious Simon Sandstepper, and is more gifted than most.
It is good that no one in the Old West knows what ‘salacious’ means.
Before that equine digression, it was revealed that Curtis Sawyer is a wandering man. In the empty spaces where the maps don’t go the wind strips away all weakness, all posturing, all irrelevancies. The big questions loom large in the vault of the sky, punctuated by clouds. Does Sawyer wander because he is a wandering man or is he a wandering man because he wanders? There is no answer to be found in the sky or the land: three mountain peaks spell out an unhelpful ellipsis.
Salacious Simon considers his own concerns. He grazes and thinks horse thoughts: sex, and sprinting, and always of the crashing storm that will bring an end to everything, boiling the oceans and flinging the earth into the sky.
But that is a story for another time.
You know that Curtis Sawyer is a wandering man, but he is also a just one. Not a bullet leaves his gun that does not fall on some evildoer. Not an innocent should die while he still stands. His hat is white, impossibly white in this dusty desert, and its boundaries are uncertain. It could be a ten-gallon hat, a stetson, a bowler, a top hat. It could be a size 22, a size 26, or big enough to consume the universe. It is most definitely white, though. There is no other colour it could possibly be.
John Evil can feel everything slipping away from him. He has pushed too far, too fast. One too many egregious acts of bureaucracy has brought the tempest to his door.
Curtis Sawyer has come to his ranch.
John takes a deep breath. Cranston stands just inside the closed door, face blank, mind preoccupied with his own concerns. Outside, the killing machine of steel and souls and black magic shrieks and roars as Sawyer takes it apart, one bullet at a time.
A terrible silence falls.
Spurred boots sound on the wooden ranch house floor, quiet but getting closer.
John straightens his waistcoat, makes sure his gun is loose in its holster. He checks his pocket watch. High noon.
The door slams open, knocking Cranston into the corner. He does not move. Framed in the doorway is Curtis Sawyer. His clothes are torn and dirty, his skin abraded where the killing machine came closest to living up to its name. John makes a mental note to upbraid the designer on the ineffectiveness of his invention, then realises that he will never get the chance.
“I’m here to put an end to your evil, John Evil,” Sawyer says. His revolver is free and levelled at John.
“Why?” John asks. He inches his hand closer to his gun. It will not help him.
“Because these people came here to be free,” Sawyer says. “Not to be owned by the likes of you.”
“Even you?” John asks.
“Sure,” Sawyer says. “I like freedom as much as a next man.”
“Then be free,” John says. He can’t keep an evil smirk off his face, even as the floorboards in his mind begin to splinter and crack. “Turn around and walk away. Let me live.”
Sawyer pauses.
“I can’t,” he says after a long moment.
“I’m the lawman,” he adds, as if that explains anything.
John Evil closes his eyes. He takes another deep breath.
“Then I suppose this is a tragedy for both of us,” he says.
He opens his eyes. He locks stares with Sawyer. The other man is so young, he thinks, behind the manly stubble and the grim demeanour.
John sets his jaw.
He draws.
***
Chris Longhurst eats like an animal, swears like Dick Dastardly, and dresses like a homeless lumberjack. He wields his pen like a sword and his sword like a pen, a practice responsible for his defeat in any number of duels.
Thomas has a nagging feeling he left the gas on. When not drawing pictures with words he dabbles in mathematics and music. He likes cats, Chris Ware and Dinosaur Jr; dislikes coriander and writing about himself in the third person.
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