The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Trusdale took off his barn coat and began shivering. Underneath he was wearing nothing but an undershirt and corduroy pants so worn the wale was almost gone and one knee was out. Sheriff Barclay went through the pockets of the coat and found a twist of tobacco in a page of the J. W. Sears catalogue, and an old lottery ticket promising a payoff in pesos. There was also a black marble.

‘That’s my lucky marble,’ Trusdale said. ‘I had it since I was a boy.’

‘Turn out your pants pockets.’

Trusdale turned them out. He had a penny and three nickels and a folded-up news clipping about the Nevada silver rush that looked as old as the Mexican lottery ticket.

‘Take off your boots.’

Trusdale took them off. Barclay took them and felt inside them. There was a hole in one sole the size of a dime.

‘Now your stockings.’

Barclay turned them inside out, and tossed them aside.

‘Drop your pants.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘No more than I want to see what’s in there, but drop them anyway.’

Trusdale dropped his pants. He wasn’t wearing underdrawers.

‘Turn around and spread your cheeks.’

Trusdale turned, grabbed his buttocks, and pulled them apart. Sheriff Barclay winced, sighed, and poked a finger into Trusdale’s anus. Trusdale groaned. Barclay removed his finger, wincing again at the soft pop, and wiped his finger on Trusdale’s undershirt.

‘Where is it, Jim?’

‘My hat?’

‘You think I went up your ass looking for your hat? Or through the ashes in your stove? Are you being smart?’

Trusdale pulled up his trousers and buttoned them. Then he stood shivering and barefoot. Not long ago he had been at home, reading his newspaper and thinking about starting a fire in the stove, but that seemed long ago.

‘I’ve got your hat in my office.’

‘Then why did you ask about it?’

‘To see what you’d say. That hat is all settled. What I really want to know is where you put the girl’s silver dollar. It’s not in your house, or your pockets, or up your poop-chute. Did you get feeling guilty and throw it away?’

‘I don’t know about no silver dollar. Can I have my hat back?’

‘No. It’s evidence. Jim Trusdale, I’m arresting you for the murder of Rebecca Cline. Do you have anything you want to say to that?’

‘Yes, sir. That I don’t know no Rebecca Cline.’

The sheriff left the cell, closed the door, took a key from the wall, and locked it. The tumblers screeched as they turned. The cell mostly housed drunks and was rarely locked. He looked in at Trusdale and said, ‘I feel sorry for you, Jim. Hell ain’t too hot for a man who’d do such a thing.’

‘What thing?’

The sheriff clumped away without any reply.

Trusdale stayed in the cell for a week, eating grub from Mother’s Best, sleeping on the bunk, shitting and pissing in the bucket, which was emptied every two days. His father didn’t come to see him, because his father had gone foolish in his eighties and in his nineties was being cared for by a couple of squaws, one Sioux and the other Lakota. Sometimes they stood on the porch of the deserted bunkhouse and sang hymns in harmony. His brother was in Nevada, hunting for silver.

Sometimes children came and stood in the alley outside his cell, chanting Hangman, hangman, come on down. Sometimes men stood out there and threatened to cut off his privates. Once Rebecca Cline’s mother came and said she would hang him herself, were she allowed. ‘How could you kill my baby?’ she asked through the barred window. ‘She was only ten years old, and twas her birthday.’

‘Ma’am,’ Trusdale said, standing on the bunk so he could look down at her white upturned face, ‘I didn’t kill your baby nor no one.’

‘Black liar,’ she said, and went away.

Almost everyone in town attended the child’s funeral. The squaws went. Even the two whores who plied their trade in the Chuck-a-Luck went. Trusdale heard the singing from his cell, as he squatted over the bucket in the corner.

Sheriff Barclay telegraphed Fort Pierre, and eventually the circuit-riding judge came. He was newly appointed and young for the job, a dandy with long blond hair down his back like Wild Bill Hickok. His name was Roger Mizell. He wore small round spectacles, and in both the Chuck-a-Luck and Mother’s Best proved himself a man with an eye for the ladies, although he wore a wedding band.

There was no lawyer in town to serve as Trusdale’s defense, so Mizell called on George Andrews, owner of the mercantile, the hostelry, and the Good Rest Hotel. Andrews had gotten two years of higher education at a business school in Omaha. He said he would serve as Trusdale’s attorney only if Mr and Mrs Cline agreed.

‘Then go see them,’ Mizell said. He was in the barber shop, tilted back in the chair and taking a shave. ‘Don’t let the grass grow under your feet.’

‘Well,’ Mr Cline said, after Andrews had stated his business, ‘I got a question. If he doesn’t have someone to stand for him, can they still hang him?’

‘That would not be American justice,’ George Andrews said. ‘And although we are not one of the United States just yet, we will be soon.’