Episode 22

Sober as Sunday

Coolie Taylor eventually came to with a volcanic hangover raging inside his skull. He looked about himself at a world that swirled in his vision as if seen through rippled glass. His mouth tasted like the bottom of a cow stall. He shook his head and blinked his eyes to clear them. Coolie then clasped his head in agony. A lightning bolt flashed through his skull to sear a point somewhere deep in his brain. He leaned forward on the wooden bunk, gripping the frame with his head between his knees.

“Christ! That was a mistake,” Coolie said. His croak was followed by deep, agonized moans.

After a bit he finally looked up again and saw that he was in a cell in a modest looking but seemingly secure jail. Brick walls. A door of crossed iron bands. A slit window well above the reach of even a tall man set on the opposite wall and also covered in iron bands. Sunlight come in through the high window.

“Well shit,” he muttered. His voice sounded to him like it was coming from the bottom of a well.

He ducked his head between his legs again. A door opened and boots clopped on the floor. Coolie looked up just in time to get a face full of chill water.

Joe Wiley dumped the entire bucket of ice-cold water onto Coolie and looked down on the now soaked man.

“GODDAMMIT! What the hell!” Coolie shouted and sputtered then winced as his own voice cut through his head like a saw blade.

“Good morning,” Joe said.

“Damned if it is!” Coolie said in bitter disagreement.

Coolie looked up to give the lawman a piece of his mind and then saw it was Joe Wiley.

“I mighta known. Ol’ Snakehand Wiley. The bible-toting bastard orphan gun hand.”

“Well it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise since I summoned you here,” Joe said.

Coolie screwed up his face in deep thought.

“Did ya? I guess I forgot,” Collie said, and the light came on. “Oh yeah! Goldam if ya didn’t!”

“I didn’t wire you to come paint the town red.”

“I thought I’d have a bracer or two after the train ride. Cut the dust.”

“Then a shot or two turned to a dozen or two,” Joe said, shaking his head.

“You know what I always say,” Coolie said, looking up sheepish with eyes red as embers, “you ain’t really drunk if you can lay on the floor without holding on.”

“I need a deputy. Someone I can trust. Once you sober up, I’ll let you out and swear you on. There is a lot of work to be done to cleanse this hellhole,” Joe said, tossing the bucket in the corner and walking away from the cell. He swung the cell door shut behind him.

“Now just wait a goldamn minute! You let me out of here right now, Joe Wiley! I’m as sober as Sunday! And who sez I want to help you get killed and get killed myself in the process! You gotta lotta nerve, you do! Summon me here and treat me like this! Let me out!” Coolie said.

Joe, being used to Coolie’s ways, ignored his ranting. He looked through the cage bars of the next cell to the two men he’d arrested from the Paradise on his first night in town.

“I’ll have some hen fruit and beans sent over for breakfast. With some strong coffee to wash it down,” Joe told them.

“When we getting out?” the uglier of the two asked. It was a close contest. The pair looked like what happens when first cousins marry.

“I am conferring with myself on the sentence. Just eat your breakfast and we’ll see by the end of the day if you are properly chastised,” Joe said.

“What the hell’s that mean?” the other said.

“It means thank Jesus you didn’t get what I gave your amigo,” Joe said, making to walk away.

“What about me? Don’t I get no breakfast?” Coolie asked.

“You’ll just puke it up. And since you’ll be the one cleaning it up…” Joe said.

Coolie closed his yap and stewed in silence as he lay dripping on the soaked bunk.

Joe left the jailhouse and walked over to a hash house. It was a simple place serving cheap, filling food to those hungry and in a hurry. No tablecloths here. No tables either. Men sat on benches eating from tin plates balanced on their knees. The man running it was a towering figure with a handlebar mustache and strands of hair pomaded across his scalp.

“I need two orders of eggs and beans and some coffee to be run over to my prisoners at the jailhouse,” Joe said and dropped a dollar on the counter with a silvery plink.

“Will do, marshal,” the roughhouse cook said. “Anything for yourself?”

“No thanks. I’ll grab something later.”