The Left Handed Shot

“RED ROVER, RED ROVER, SEND CALI RIGHT OVER!” The ocean of bar-goers sway to the piano’s bed of broken keys as each drunk looks up to the cancan girl posing her red thigh-high gar- ter mounted on her lengthy leg. Each man was beyond and breached heavily drunk. The cancan bar hop, Cali, just flicked her leg as each man began to throw coins in the barkeep’s upside-down top hat that sat on the stage before her.

“Penny for your thoughts, Cali!”

The barkeep swayed behind the bar as he heavily poured rounds at the bar top whenever a flask or mug reached for him. There was no such thing as a late sleeper nor early riser at the bar. Men stayed awake to the constant ongoing affection of wagtails or fell asleep with their chair and tilted cowboy hat. This was a saloon catered to wagtails that served drinks with a smile and full cleavage and flyby wenches that cancaned to the piano.

“Holy Poker!”

The small ocean of men gathering to the sway of the piano’s music began to throw poker chips up in the air. The term Cali yelled out was rather risqué for that era.

Once a bar for strictly wenches, the main floor became an around-the-clock poker hall. As for the back rooms, they were closed off from loitered drunken cowboys. It was all for storage of booze and barrels of beer. It was 1893, and hot beer was a commodity—quite the article of trade. If anything, men of America in the Wild West were of a unique and broadly wide melting pot.

“CANCAN, CAN YOU DO THE CANCAN? YAY! HIP-HIP HURRAY!”

Suddenly, among the on goers of hollering men, Mr. Ray Thomas walked through the swinging saloon doors. Knowing every- one would notice him for his high prestige and arrogance, he halted at the entrance to the bar. Whipping around one by one, each cow- boy hollered his name. It was Ray’s personal gang. He knew he’d need to seek them out for help in getting the half-past-the-hour-old infant to his sister’s hideout. Looking to the stage, he just bundled up the silent baby in his arms. He knew soon it would be time for feeding, and home would be where he’d be heading, but a shot of whiskey tempted him from the bar goer who was curious to know what was in the bundle of sheets.

“Ray! Get over here. I want to buy you a round. What’s in your arm? You hiding something?”

Soon Cali, who was interrupted from her stage act, hopped down to the floor of crowded men and waltzed up to Ray with an occasional groping from estranged cowboys wanting her attention.

“What might we have here?” “My newborn son.”

“He’s a half-breed. I call it.” “I intend on raising him.”

“I should know, I’m half of a kind.”

He gawked at her as he downed his second shot. The baby began to cry softly and then full on screamed.

“Where is this child’s mother? You’ve been chasing after red- skinned women?”

“Never mind what I chase after, Cali. This baby needs feeding. I believe his mom just died giving birth about half past the hour. She was raped. Her name was Kathryn. The purest white woman I’d ever laid eyes on. Raped by a savage. I’m taking my son on. As I’d call him my son. I have yet to grieve. Doc just put him in my arms, and I was to pardon myself as they are preparing her for burial.”

“Give me that child. I’m tired and it was a long night last night, but I feed just fine.”

She reached her arms out. Ray was hesitant to let go of the baby. He just took another shot of whiskey and lost count before he knew it. Finally, he spoke up at the wagtail.

“Be careful to hold him. He’s a heavyweight.”

“I’ll be tending upstairs in the one room we keep unlocked. Follow me.”

“I’ll follow you, but be careful with him. Guess I have no choice. I’m miles out from home.”

The bartender filled his shot glass and pushed the whiskey bot- tle at him and called it on the house.

“Honey, if I had a hanky I’d dab those tears away. Let the baby cry. He’ll be good and ready for feeding.”

As the cowboy got up, he felt his typical drunken buzz come over him like a sharp wind. He just tilted his cowboy hat back and grabbed for his booze. Following the beautiful brunette back behind doors to the other half of the bar, he watched as all the men turned their attention up at the stage of women who frolicked and frisked their breasts at the audience of poker players. He again wasn’t inter- ested, nor was he interested in Cali. He missed his newly given fian- cée who died giving birth to a half-breed of Indian blood. Cali was rather beautiful, but nothing could come between the baby’s deceased mother and his memories of her. Everything was twirling and spin- ning as he reached the top of the banister’s hallway. He looked down at the party of drunken men who were there for a good time.

“Shush...baby, here’s a bosom. This is my haven, Ray. I stay in this room, and there is no selling my body at this saloon. I am safe here. Benji left me after our child died at birth. He said the baby wasn’t his. I escaped and came here on a horse I stole away. It took me several miles, but I knew this was once the place I was accepted.”

There was an awkward silence as Ray sat on the bed, sipping at his bottle of liquor. Everyone knew of Cali. She was a lot younger than most wagtails. It was almost sad that she was at that profession by choice. She could have made a good wife, regardless if she was half Indian. A good man would have taken to her regardless of her dark Indian features. She was, for certain, that of an Americanized woman. She didn’t need to be doing what she was doing for a living.

Ray looked up at her as he took his cowboy hat off and sat it beside himself on the bed.

“You take on this child and breastfeed him, and I will guaran- tee you a home away from here. My sister will be needing a helping hand, and you can stay with her while I ranch the town westward onward from this town. I ain’t in much mood for offering a perma- nent home. but I guarantee it would be a hideout from Benji. I know of him and don’t take to kindly to weasels.”

“Life is hard, Ray. I think I will take up your offer. It can’t get any harder than times have been.”

Looking down at the newborn baby, she wished he was her own. It was a moment she knew she would never forget. She would have to be crazy to not obey the man of wealth and prestige. He was inviting her into a homestead away from bar goers. She was, quite frankly, sick of the life she felt she had to lead for the race she was—not of a pure white woman. Cali always felt out of place and unaccepted even as a child, and while all that was going through her mind, she couldn’t help but see herself in the baby she held at.

“I want you to stay here with the baby. I am going to round up James. He’s a rancher on my cattle ranch. He’s a nice young man that will take you to my grandfather’s homestead. Lindsay, my sister, you know of her?”

“Yes. I know of Lindsay.”

“She’ll be there waiting for me to show up with this baby bun- dle. She doesn’t know what happened. I don’t want you telling her a thing. Keep to yourself. James, my crony, will be tending to the matter and will lead you there.”

“Okay, I won’t turn back on this good opportunity.”

“You just keep to yourself, Cali, and I’ll follow shortly after.”

“I give you my word, Ray.”

Foggily regaining sight, the lone cowboy looked to the rafters of an unfamiliar barn. As his head spun from a hangover worth every drop of booze the night prior, the man had his share of enjoyment before passing out in a strange place. He was wet behind the ears when it came to innocence and was callow from tender age and far from worldly wise. The young man’s gullible ways had him green and unripe in maturity. The name was James.

The night before was sour, and he hadn’t a clue who he might have gotten bitter over the feud that brought him to hiding in a stranger’s barn. All he could gather was the remembrance of a good time with a fly-hop that he stole from his comrade, who led him in a pack to the little ghost town far from his homestead of acceptance. Knowing he was far from familiar with that neck of town, he knew he’d be on his way. The woman beneath his chin lay facedown across his chest. She was draped naked in his poncho, and she seemingly didn’t want to wake to him pushing her off himself either.

Grabbing for his gun holster, James got up slowly while hear- ing the barn doors wooden block lock fiddle up and down. A man’s throat was cleared as he opened the doors to come in the barn and gather a bucket of milk. Ducking down from the opening of the stall, he began to take his browned and dirtied poncho off the free wench who lay there on the hay pile sound asleep. Taking it off, she lay limp and in the nude. Not caring whichever which way to wake her, he figured a free time was better than two bits paid out.

Peering between the cracks of the stall, the young cowboy waited nervously as the old man sat milking at the milk cow. From the milk cow, he walked to the goat across the front of the barn. The old man hummed away as he filled the tin bucket. Suddenly, after a few minutes, the barfly that lay on the pile of fodder beneath him began to speak out.

“Say, my time ain’t free, lone ranger. Where are my garments?”

James, the young man, queued her to hush her mouth as it abruptly grew silent. The old man milking at the goat stopped, and the pattern of milk squirting in the tin bucket quit abruptly.

The young cowboy threw open the gate of the stall and made a run for it. He knocked over the old man off his stool while he was running past. Bewildered, the old man tried to get up to look out into the field, but the young cowboy had vanished.

“Sir, I truly apologize, Mr. Thomas. I found my way out of my undergarments. Would you lend me your poncho, sir?”

“Say, you the fly-hop I hear goes bantering from place to place? This ain’t your homestead. I am expecting my great-grandson in deliverance to conceive this milk. I’m in a mighty great deal of griev- ance and was saying a silent prayer over this kettle of milk. Am I sup- posed to forgive this situation? I’m all marled up. I don’t even know who ran off as fast as a thunderbolt past my bad right side. Say, you say you are in the nude, young lady?”

The sky parted in half as the rain began to scatter in thickly heavy drops. The pitter patter began to louden as again it wasn’t the milking of the cow. This time there was a heavy storm brewing.

“I’m telling you, old man...I ain’t got no garments. Are you deftly, dexterously smart, or can you not hear me? If you don’t give me your poncho, I’m going to make you lose your only ear. Your left ear while I am at it! You hear me? If you were smart, you’d choose to get up and offer me that there poncho on your back.”

“Missy, I’d give the shirt off my back to any man nor if it’s a lady. I ain’t that kind. Here. Here’s your poncho. I ain’t want no trou- ble. Now get up on out of here and get. You ain’t the kind of woman I would have had a liking for even if I was a full spring chicken.”

After the old man threw his rudely requested poncho at the old F-L-O-P, he looked behind himself in dismay. She was behind the stall with a gun aimed even at his direction. Stilling his shivers, he began to speak out a mumble, softly.

“Dear heavenly father lord...God, above. I pray upon this woman that she aim her site of her six gun elsewhere and remove herself from my barn that wavers no space for a wench. God, a wench can be of grace, but this woman need repenting.”

“Repent! I’ll show you repent! Get to your knees and crawl to me, old man Thomas. I had a baby not too shy of ten months, and I feed just fine. If you want milk, you repent my way.”

Confused, the old man just looked up from his overly gray and hairy-lined and frowned eyebrows.

“What is it, about shy of noon, the hour?”

“Missy, you’ve got a gun pointed at me square between the eyes. You expect me to call the time?”

“No, but I expect to call the shots!”

He looked her up and down as she passed him, and she shook at his low-brimmed cowboy hat that fell to the fodder mulched ground.

“I’ll be wearing this hat. Where is my horse and saddle?”

“Eat horse shit.”

“A lady ain’t a lady until she rides sidesaddle on that particular

horse, if I might add.”

“You ain’t entitled to my barnyard. Let me send for my grand-

son. He ain’t too proud to bag for your kind offering of breastmilk. Just put down the gun, missy.”

“It would be the smartest thing you ever did.”

“Where might this child be?”

As soon as the woman tilted old man Thomas’s low-brimmed

hat back on her head, she began to look sharply at the shadow in the corner of the barn.

“Who the hell do you think you’re fooling, Cali?” “Lindsay.”

“Leave him be.”

“I meant no harm, Lindsay.”

“I just want a dressing of proper attire, and I’ll be on my way.”

“It’s funny how you lower your gun shyly at me. What would have happened if I hadn’t pulled a shotgun from my grandfather’s door frame? I heard you out here loud as day, you trollop.”

“I get it. I ain’t your kind. I’ll be on my way.”

“I suggest you find a better article of attire, for that’s my grand- father’s inherited poncho from his eldest deceased grandson. Are you shy of a mournful sermon up in your soul? To criticize we good peo- ple for a matter of your inconvenient situation.”

“Ma’am, I’m confused. Take that gun off of my bite. I’m grind- ing my old gummed mouth bone dry. I ain’t done nothing to you, young miss. Take that aimed gun off of me right now and surely I’ll help the situation.”

“I confess I feel mournful. I knew of Gregory. Everybody knew of Gregory. He was the head poncho.”

“Well, now you’ll be calling to my brother, Ray, you half-breed.” “Half-breed? Is that what you’ll call me now?”

“Paint your face up for prostituting out your soul to the devil,

are we? I ain’t got a finer more colorful dress to acquaintance your painted face. What pallet of color might I choose for you from my trunk of, what do I call it...dresses made for classful and porcelain skin that of a woman like myself?”

“You can tear me down, white woman. Call me names, but what have you that I don’t? I have a heart. I am a human being. My class can’t make it in this unmet world, but I am still a woman, and a woman who needs to get by. I want to be able to walk away from this situation with my head held high. I want my dignity. Please, lend me a garment. I need to feel trust before I put down this gun, and I will be on my way. I know your family is of high stature and wealth. I know you give to the community. I, on the other hand, am in no disposition to give. I give only what I can, and that is of me as a wench-maid. I will leave on the count that you give me an article of clothing that covers me for what it’s worth. Would you do on to your neighbor as you would yourself?”

“Cali, I knew your mother. She was as white and pure as day. She was a good woman who was raped by the Indian menfolk. You’re

too young to sell your body to nothing. Why, a few bits to hold your meal for the day? Why don’t you give in?”

“How?”

“Get down on your knees and pray to the ground. I want you to pray until your body shakes to your temples.”

“What?”

“Pray to God for forgiveness.”

“Put the gun down, Cali.”

“I ain’t one to barter with a woman of prestige and high class,

Lindsay.”

“I’m going to make you change your ways, Cali.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Picking on my grandfather! An old man. Haha!”

“I will repent. I have no place to call my home. Benji, the tomb

steward of the saloon, in halfway bit my faith. He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t want me anymore.”

“Where is your little boy, Cali?”

“My little boy is gone. He died at birth.”

“Your breasts are full. I’d hate to know what you’ve been doing

as a tramp, a whore, and a thief. Never mind. I ain’t having it, Papa. I ain’t letting this loose goose find her way to my new baby nephew we’ll be expecting any time now. Have remorse. The mother died giving birth. It’s scum like you who should die for our sins rather an innocent white woman who only meant well.”

“You need not say more, Sissy. Go get her a dress and apron and undergarments as she requested. God saves those who have sinned just as much as you, Sissy. We all are sinners in one manner or another. Go on. Go get her her garments.”

“One condition. It’s my least favorite dress I’ll be fetching to you.”

Cali, the saloon tramp, lowered the gun as she stared in silence at the old man who shook on the ground. Slowly, he got up to hold his hip. It was sore from his tumble to the ground. It was a guess- ing hour by that time. What seemed to have happened seconds to the hour ago really dragged its time onward. The arrival of old man Thomas’s great grandson was to happen at any moment.

“Give me that gun, Cali, you dried-up wench. I am tired of being lied at. Sit over on that hay bale while Sissy gathers your garments.”

“I am in no mood for you to change your mind, old man. I have no place to go from here. If you really want to help me, then I ask that I have my dignity.”

Old man Thomas stared her way and hesitated but surely grabbed the gun from Cali’s hand. Cocking the gun, he let loose of the round of bullets.

“I’m sure you’re worth saving. I’m not one to take back my words of honesty.”

“I spoke with Ray this morning. I admit, alcohol is still settled in my blood, Mr. Thomas. He can tell you what happened, but I, as a matter of fact, have a new love. Your son brought that newborn to the saloon two hours shy ago. I was supposed to meet him here. That young man that stormed off and knocked you off your stool pedal was a young man who runs around with Ray’s pack. If I can say anything...I’m sorry I let loose of my body and casually had a good time in your barn here. I barely have had a wink of sleep. Thought I would be paid, but I should have known that young man was a rock skipper.”

“My grandfather here doesn’t need to know your dirty deed. If you are gone today, I wouldn’t miss this dress. It’s worn and dirty and mighty slouchy. That’s all I can do for undergarments. It ain’t a free show to put out around here. You bets get out of that poncho and dress appropriately. My granddaddy ain’t saving no wench. Say, how’d you get caught up in all of this? Ain’t it a coincidence you so happen to still be feeding?”

“Ray sent me here. I followed that young man to this home- stead. I hear the other homestead is to be rebuilt by the townsfolk.”

“Don’t act like you know anything. I live every day in fear that I might get a visit from Indians that ain’t nomadic. This is our hideout. If you are here for certain because of Ray ordering you to be here, you’re staying. Nobody is to know where our hideout is.”

“Well, that young gentleman knew where you were and brought me here on saddleback. I can only guess the time, but ain’t he supposed to be here with the newborn? He’s a half-breed, Lindsay, if you hadn’t been told.”

“A half-breed? A half-breed. You ain’t speaking truth, Cali. If that baby is a half-breed, then that means the momma was raped.”

“If you only knew my kind is bullied and beaten by unkind words, but that child needs a home and for you to take a liking.”

“Papa, is this true? Is this baby half-raced? Tell me he ain’t between the lines.”

“Sissy, I want you to get inside. Mind me, your only grandfather.”

“That’s my baby I’m taking to. Cali, you ain’t to teach me no lessons. You Trollip.”

“Call me what you will, but you’ll treat that baby like it was your own. I met him already, prior this early dawn break. The boy has light eyes and dark skin. You’ll see, Lindsay.”

“If I could have been told by Ray first and foremost, things would have been a lot easier. I need a moment to sulk. Excuse me, Papa. I’ll still keep a watch on you with this shotgun.”

“I’ll be doing the right thing, Lindsay. Your grandfather took the gun from me. I will follow Ray’s lead when he gets here with the new child.”

“Better, or I’ll have a bullet where it will belong if you disobey my eldest, my grandfather.”

“Sissy, go tend to the stew and keep a watch out for Ray, your brother.”