|
|
By bucko, on December 15th, 2011
What to do when your long-awaited field trip to the West didn’t produce lanky cowboys dropping into your lap?
Buy one.
Take this tall glass of cool water I found at a Long Beach bookstore.
 A twofer special from Monarch, from the collection of es Monarch Books doesn’t reveal the illustrator of this western by King of Cowboy Lit Ernest Haycox, but the style is distinctly Robert Stanleyish (and the foreground bucko looks like Stanley too–the illustrator often used himself as the manly model).
Ernest Haycox wrote moody, atmospheric westerns wherein each ten-gallon-hat-wearing, low-slung-holster-bearing protagonist had a chip on his shoulder, a tobacco pouch peeping from his pocket, a woman to conquer, and a gimlet-eyed gunslinger to face down. A tall order for any writer to accomplish but Haycox could write westerns riding backwards on a horse with Apaches raining arrows down on him. Blindfolded. With two hands tied behind his back. And his wife could do the same but backwards and in high heels. Um. Anyhoo, this particular title (which I must admit first drew me to pick it because I read “Brand Fires on the Fridge,” which must be the kitchen-sink kind of western) was formed from two separate pulp magazine short stories published in 1929, which gives me pause. Was it written in the bright days before the stock market plunged? Did penniless stockholders and out-of-work laborers absorb the tight-lipped shoot-from-the-hip style of the hero and lift stakes to go West, young man?
Monarch was known for its pulpy mass-market books, which ranged from titles with the words “Flesh,” “Fury,” and “Fire,” to erotic tales. I heard that they were planning to scent their books–romances with Chanel No. 5, for example. Westerns would’ve smelled like…leather? Horses? Rye? One too many cigarettes and saddle sores? The smell-o-matic book never happened, but the possibilities are intriguing…
Sage? Stinky socks? Campfire? Gunpowder? Sweat?
 With his Colt and his fists... from the collection of es
By bucko, on October 21st, 2011
Steer the rattling wagons into a tight circle! Protect the women and children! Draw your six-shooters as whooping Indians on painted war ponies streak over the rise of a hill!
Look sharp, Tonto! This isn’t just a tired western stereotype, it’s a Silver-Screen Western Hero Equation!
 c. 2011 es cowboylands In reel life: Earnest pioneers moving to promised lands because of lack of opportunity in nineteenth-century America (+ free land) + marauding Plains Indians (x outrage of desecration of hunting lands and sacred places) =
(a.) massacre, which yields in the presence of a lone survivor the ripe beginnings of a classic vengeance plot
or
(b.) cavalry riding to the rescue, which yields in the presence of handsome leading man and handsome leading woman the immediate commencement of the classic civilizing of the west plot.
In real life it’s a little different.
Earnest writer journeying to the promised land of FinishNovelandia (+ agent [epically awesome urban cowboy x friends x writing colleagues]) + marauding job demands (rent + health care + saving + love of fine red wine) =
potential MASSACRE of all aspiring writers’ hopes and dreams!!!!!
Fear not. Grow a pair of brass…spurs and follow the wisdom of the west!
1.) Circle those wagons. Protect time and energy at all costs!
2.) Those marauding Apaches/Sioux/Comanche didn’t pop into the picture out the blue just as marauding job demands didn’t exist until you got yourself trapped. Next time, before you venture into paycheck territory, learn when to say no. Get an extension on an unreasonable schedule. Increase skillz so you can charge more for working less.
But you’re in the thick of the battle now! Arrows whizzing overhead! You’ve got two bullets left! And you’ve blown a novel deadline and been up all night to complete a paying freelance project!
3.) Hope you’re the lone survivor. Vengeance will be sweet.
4.) Or hope a super handsome cavalry officer strides up in his glossy boots to save the day, your writing life, and your novel.
 I call dibs on Woody Strode!
By bucko, on September 18th, 2011
I knew where it was going. Anyone who’s done his or her western homework would.
There are two American archetypes that were sometimes played against each other in old Westerns.
The egghead Eastern lawyer who lacks the skills or stomach for a gunfight is contrasted with the tough Western rancher and ace shot who has no patience for book learnin’.
–Maureen Dowd, “Egghead and Blockheads,” New York Times Op-Ed, September 17, 2011.
First, the analogy: James Stewart’s ineffectual lawyer. John Wayne’s blustery westerner. The woman who loves them both. The villain who’s so nasty the rule of law can’t put him away. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962. Yessss!
Liberty Valance–making womenfolk hide (they’d hide) and men step aside
“…Because the point of a gun was the only law that Liberty understood
When it came to shooting straight and fast, he was mighty good…
And the man who shot Liberty Valance would be the bravest of them all.” (Thanks,Gene Pitney!)
It was an anti-western, maybe the first of its kind–a western that gave a nod to all the oater conventions (good hero and bad villain; earning the love of a civilizing feminine force of a woman; showdown with awesome theme music) then deftly reversed and flipped them.
 Marvin, Stewart, and Wayne in Liberty Valance. OMG! And Lee van Cleef!!!!
- The villain who is as bad they come–Lee Marvin being so bad he’s good (“This time, right between the eyes.”)
- The tough-talking cowboy who can walk tough too–John Wayne acting so much a piece of the Wild West you’d think he was a prickly cactus.
- The woman yearning for book learning–a beautiful Vera Miles (“I know the Good Book from preacher talk; but it’d be a soul comfort if I could read the words myself.”)
- And the egghead, an Eastern dude who’s beaten and shot at until his cultured veneer cracks–James Stewart who channels both worldliness and naivete, cool reserve and righteous fury.
And next, the political-media narrative–out-of-touch professorial type against the swagger of the big Texan. Duh, guys, Barack Obama vs. Rick Perry. They certainly look their parts, all squinty Wayne-ish and stammering Stewart-ish.
Maureen Dowd draws the film into a scathing indictment of Know-Nothing-esque Rick Perry, a Republican contender for president and a man who boasts of his educational underachievement and hard-on-crime execution stats. If you despise the man and who he stands for, you’ll chortle at her one-two punches; if cowboy talk makes you spontaneously proclaim the Pledge of Allegiance, your eyes will blister with rage. In deference to my readers, who range from coastal elites to red-staters to real-life cowboys to those in other countries who are groaning at the thought of yet another half-assed political commentary from someone who pays more attention to red-carpet photo bombs than carpet bombing, I will not comment directly. I will instead shout “Huzzah!” for a journalist bringing in a epically awesome western classic to make a point and “Boo!” for fostering a misconception about what Ford actually was making a point about.
Which takes us back to the anti-western Fordian flippage. The filmmaker who, you could argue, started it all with 1939′s Stagecoach brings back the typical gun-toting heroic rancher Tom Doniphon (played by ur-gun-toter John Wayne), who is fully at home in a rough-riding town out West, complete with pretty young thing (Vera Miles) and nasty gunslinger (Marvin, looking bad-sexy as all get out in his…right. Sorry. Back to summary).
Then a stranger comes to town: the earnest but ineffectual Easterner Ransom Stoddard (Stewart), who turns the head of the pretty young thing away from the virile cowboy. Yeah, yeah, there’s a potentially lethal conflict between the lawless Liberty Valance and the lawful Stoddard, but the real conflict, buckos, is whether Hallie will choose the man who can protect her from thugs or the man who can teach her how to read.
(Hence the Obama-Perry storyline–will the US public choose the lawyerly prig or the bully? The man who is passionate for civilizing law or the one who knows a gun is the surest way to win? Stay tuned…)
But what many shoot past is the way Ford and his actors created a dynamic in which the cowboy and the lawyer complement each other–they may be rivals but without the stalwart rancher, Ransom Stoddard knows he would be ground under the spurred boot heel of Liberty Valance. And the stoic rancher Doniphon knows the shoot-from-the-hip days of the Wild West are numbered–which is why, when Stoddard and Valance finally face off, Stoddard shoots Valance and lets Stoddard be the hero and literally win the West, becoming in time a senator. Oh, and he gets the girl, too.
Ford takes the audience’s expectations and does that foldy-magic-trick thing people can do with dollar bills in which George Washington’s head turns into a mushroom. I picture 1962 audiences’ heads exploding but maybe by then there was a growing cynicism of how the West was winning the world. It’s too bad that now this film gets lumped into Dances with F**king Wolves category, which makes my head explode, but that’s a different post.
What is the West, Ford was asking. It’s what people tell us it is–it’s what’s written up in newspapers as fact when it’s all legend. But it’s also about the close, volatile connection between like- and unlike-minded people–a community of Others who have to get along to save civilization. And a rootin- tootin’ western with Lee Marvin slinking along like sex in spurs. (Dang. Sorry. But look at him. I mean, look at him!)
By bucko, on September 9th, 2011
Some Silver-Screen Western Heroes have big pecs and holsters hanging alongside their brass balls.
 The Silver-Screen Western Antihero Some have breasts that don’t sag and thighs without cellulite, even if they try to wreak vengeance in a poncho.
 Gratiuitous Raquel Welch photo All ride into town and act all aloof and lo! They get the girl and kick the villain’s ass. And their wounds? Nothing but flesh wounds, that a lovely lass can help doctor.
Beginning: They appear out of the blue, without a past. Convenient.
Middle: They strive to save the town despite villainous villain and femme fatale in cowboy boots.
End: They posture in a showdown with a villain and dispatch said villain then either choose to stay with the community, hanging up their holsters with their brass balls, or they ride off into the wilderness, balls and holsters intact.  They make it seem so easy. But imagine if life isn’t so cut and dry, so black and white. Instead of a town to save, you have 240+ pages to write, and nope–no lives are on the line. Just your self-resect.
At the start of writing a novel, you have it all planned out. Some of it anyway.
Beginning: You ride into your first draft of a novel, shooting guns like a rowdy cowboy for the sheer joy of it.
End: You know without a doubt you will ride into the bookstore where your novel is on the best-seller list, shooting guns like a rowdy cowboy for the sheer joy if it.
But the Middle. Yippi yi ki oy. Like a novel’s middle, there’re a multitude of ways to get from A to Z, and many of them rake you over coals–I mean, are adventurous. As in “dynamite fuse sputtering by your head as you try to saw through the bonds with a shard of glass” adventurous. There are dead ends. False leads. Red herrings. Bad moves. And then there are the stakes, which get upped up the wazoo with each revision. And then there is a showdown. Yikes. 
Beginning is easy. It’s perseverance that’s a bitch. But if you want to be a Silver-Screen Western Hero even on a late draft, here’s what you do.
Beginning: Ride into each revision without a past. No baggage. Shoot up the town or not–just keep your eye on the villain (you, as in your worst self). You want to write a novel; the villain (you) wants to keep you from writing it.
Middle: Stay focused and be decisive. And wiley. With each step, the villain (you) will try to stop you.
End: If you’ve been keeping up with that dastardly villain, the showdown won’t scare the bejeezus out of you. There’s no turning back though, once the guns come out of their holsters, so be prepared for a self-reckoning. Then blast away–life’s too short to postpone the inevitable facing of self.
The End…until next time. And go wild at that book signing, bucko! 
By bucko, on September 6th, 2011
Nothing makes my day more than drifting through a town that has mojo already and finding a shrine to the West. Like discovering the Mithraic alter beneath a Roman church, it means that I have uncovered a power so potent it can’t be hidden.
So here was Atlantic City: slots, mobsters, boardwalk, 1940s-sailors-on-leave / bad-1980s-haircut feel.
And there was the Wild Wild West, 24-hour happy-hour style. I knelt at its altar and came to a truth:
The West is so universal, so iconic, so heavy with potent symbolism, that it needs only a few cues to make it come alive in the eye of the beholder. Even in the midst of commercial sprawl.
 Saguaro. (check.)
 Covered Wagon. (check)
And red rock thing. (check)
This says
a.) we are in crazy-ass exotic landscape. Think about it: where do saguaro grow? Nowhere but a certain desert called the Sonoran desert. Which only exists in a few places in the Southwest and Mexico. For the urban elite and urban fluffballs, that might as well be Mars.
b.) we are intrepid travelers. Just be aware, that means we are anything-can-happen tough. Eat-our-mates-if-you-run-out-of-food ready. Dirt-and-scorpions-under-our-nails mean. Constant-fear of attacks-from-Native-Americans-who-are-pissed-that-we-are-messing-up-the-land stressed. Still ready to think covered wagons are “quaint”? You gas-guzzling, seat-belt-wearing, air-conditioner-tapping bozo–you don’t have the cajones to handle the real thing, so go ahead and nuzzle up to this concrete/steel fake thing.
c.) I would make fun of this rock but for the fact that the rocks out West really look like this. Especially with the pine trees. The landscape out West is so real it looks fake.
And to really mix in some “wild” add in a near-naked woman with cowboy hat.
Better than the tame pioneer women with steel cajones, fretting over Indian attack, lack of clean clothes, the terror of childbirth in the wilderness, the dumping of prized heirlooms, and just about everything else a sane person would be worrying about.
I felt right at home–Wild West, 24/7, with buffet helping of cowboy coffee, mountain oysters, and, if you’re unlucky to get snowed in like the Donner Party, a feast of human body parts. Ah, the West–it always makes me see things a little…um…dark. I guess Atlantic City won’t be calling me for PR anytime soon?
By bucko, on July 1st, 2011
The Dude totally got them. Roy Rogers harmonized for them in their self-titled theme song by Bob Nolan. The glamorous Supremes sang about them. Jack Palance recited their theme song. The Library of Congress, in 2010, honored them with their song’s inclusion into the National Registry.
Seeeeeeeeeeeee them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Looooooooooonely but free I’ll be found
Drifffffffting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
Caaaaaaares of the past are behind
Nooooooowhere to go but I’ll find
Just where the trail will wind
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
Is there any better summer song? When “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” comes on, with the soft croons of the Sons of the Pioneers, I give up trying to write that chapter, proofread that layout, scrub that shower curtain. I’ll keep rolling on, like those tumbleweeds. At least until I come to the fence of my own devising: my bad-ass taskmaster self.
Reel-life tumbleweeds make the silver-screen drifter cool as cool can be. The real-deal tumbleweed is a diaspore that invokes windswept barren film locations for excellent reason: it’s at home in dry-as-dirt deserts from North America to Africa. Dead to the world, it tumbles along when dry, sprinkling seeds when wet. And cluttering up way too many yards, if you have the fences to catch them.
But reel-life is more important. Sit back, grab a brewski, and check out this mash-up-worthy video of Tumbleweed/tumbleweed. Happy summer! (Now get to work…)
By bucko, on June 24th, 2011
Ponderosa Ranch meant wholesome family entertainment with guns and cowboys, and first lick of flame burning up the hand-drawn map of the ranch meant “Bring in your TV dinners, kids, Bonanza is starting!”
 Ponderosa Ranch (Autry Collections Photo) Check out the cultural landmark on display at the Autry National Center, a must-see museum in Los Angeles, chockfull of reel-life and real-life cowboys and much, much more. It’s a museum that strives to reverse the effects TV and film has had on western regional history. (Q: Were there more people out West than white cowboys? A: Yes.) They also love their TV and film cowboys, by the way. Hence the map.
I remember the map from growing up, and the cooler-than-awesome yellow lettering that read “Bonanza,” right before you saw the guys of the show squinting into the camera one by one. I wasn’t one of the fans that watched every one of the 431 episodes between September 1959 and February 1973, because I wasn’t born for most of that time. But Bonanza’s legacy shaped my understanding of the west, and to this day, my appreciation for both all that is classical (John Ford) and revisionist (Jarmusch).
 Even as a tot my views on cowboys and Indians were set by the ripple effects of the Cartwright clan. When my friends and I galloped through yards on firefly-lit summer eves, I was so totally the Indian.
Before I get a slew of mad-as-hornets Bonanza bullies sending me gunpowder through the mail, let me say that if I could do it all over, I would not only call Indians “Native Americans” and not do the stereotypical “hwa-hwa-hwa” shriek , but I would also never talk the trash I did about cowboys.
Cowboys just weren’t cool then, in my mind. Like the Cartwrights, they let women make them wear clean clothes on Sundays and dirt was sprinkled a bit only on their elbows and knees. They stood for a community of laws and never pulled a gun unless they were forced to, and even then, they’d rap the wrongdoer on the nose with the barrel and haul his ass off to jail. And they wouldn’t say “ass.”
Just by breathing the same air as Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns in the late sixties and early seventies, I’d somehow glommed on to the fact that indigenous societies had profundity, gunslingers didn’t need no stinkin’ badges, and the Cartwrights were a symbol of clean-cut American values. I wanted none of it.
Fool that I was, I missed out on the TV dinners before Bonanza, where I might have caught the lessons of family dynamics before I hurtled into them with my own family. I may have sensed widower Ben Cartwright’s ambivalence about the so-called family values of the community he lived in, and felt the restlessness of Little Joe before he morphed into Pa on Little House on the Prairie.
I missed all that, but when next I walk in the Autry’s hallowed halls, I will stand reverently at Ponderosa Ranch map’s colorful lines and appreciate their myth-creating power.
Trivia: Didja know why the map isn’t drawn to the usual north-is-up orientation? The creator of the map, Robert Temple Ayres, made a mistake by placing Reno west of Virginia City. They needed a quick fix as the first scenes were being shot, so he painted the compass to point toward Reno as north.
Didja know the Ponderosa Ranch is a real place? It was a stage set for a while, then an amusement park. Now it’s fenced off, but I took a ponderosa pine cone from nearby. The size of my arm, those cones.
By bucko, on June 20th, 2011
In the right hands, stories of sex, love, and murder go beyond tabloid sensationalism to reveal truths about the human condition, drawing not just tears and laughter but the somber recognition that we are all flawed (so get over it with wine, women, and/or song). As soon as Glenna Bell gets behind the mic with her guitar, go ahead and kick back—you’re in the right hands, buckaroos.
Bell’s got the boots of a country star but sings without the safety net of two-step country clichés. Her stories on Perfectly Legal: Songs of Sex, Love and Murder take us down the country roads we usually see from our air-conditioned cars and hold us spellbound until we acknowledge we too have sinned in our heart, whether contemplating the bloody murder of a spouse (in the eerie 1-2-3 of “The Southern Gothic Wedding Waltz”) or lusting for a nineteen-year-old (“He’s hot, hot, hot!” in the cheerfully unapologetic “The Cougar Anthem”).
Glenna Bell was born, raised, educated, and is now teaching* in Texas (minus a quick swerve to Los Angeles) and you’d better hear it from me first before you go and put your cowboy-booted foot in your mouth: Texas is not all about cowboys and cattle, buckos. Its eastern forests, right on the border of Louisiana, have cultivated stellar blues and country musicians like Edgar and Johnny Winter, Janis Joplin, and George Jones. The dirt roads, and the songs inspired by them, wind past quiet backwaters, whispering pines, and into the dark emotion of the heart. In Bell’s stories—I mean, her songs—sex, love, and murder take on a macabre tint that is part comedy, part tragedy but all female awesome groove.
 Glenna Bell, 2008 copyright Amy Morris I say “stories” instead of songs because of the way the characters drift out of the lyrics to sit beside me and entertain or spook. “Frankie and Johnny,” an American Civil War–era song about a woman who faces the law after killing her man for doing her wrong (“rooty-toot-toot three times I shot”) is told from Frankie’s point of view, making it pretty clear that for her at least, getting sentenced to the electric chair for the deed is worth the satisfaction of seeing that hound of a boyfriend get what he deserves.
“Hurricane” describes a world-weary woman yet again swept away despite her better judgment by the power of love and lust—“It’s too late to run away / I’ve slipped under again.” Like a play in miniature, a woman who’s steeled herself against getting hurt is drawn up into a man’s embrace only to be hurt again—the tragic power of love that’s also hinted in the sweetly sad duet in Dewayne Blackwell’s “Honky Tonk Man.”
 Taking, Nebraska City, 2009 E. Smith Plays are familiar territory to Bell, who was a theater critic in L.A. and Houston before studying with Edward Albee. But the long and winding road from plays to stripped-down country/roots music is pretty short as the crow flies, actually. Like many a writer, Bell was always writing something as kid, even the rite-of-passage bad poetry (the badness of which she acknowledges). A college roommate taught her a few chords on guitar in one of those chance happenings that playwrights and novelists adore making much of—or is it just me? The first songs she wrote were more like poems set to music, but as “songs are fleeting,” in Bell’s words, she developed an economical lyrical style that comes alive through the grace of the connection between performer and audience.
The album Perfectly Legal, with its four-act structure and moody character studies, comes from Bell’s theatrical background—the first album of hers, she says, that was consciously created to do so. The other albums “unfolded, and now there’s a sense of knowing what I want to do—of how I want to go forward,” she says. “It’s hit the right note.” After this, she sees a direction toward a musical inspired by the minimalist and absurdist plays she studied, with her songs in a Brechtian vein. I see more moments of gritty transcendence in store. Anyone interested in collaboration with Glenna Bell? Step up, buckaroos, and give her a yodel.
Perfectly Legal: Songs of Sex, Love and Murder and her other albums can be purchased on iTunes and Amazon, as well as on the official Glenna Bell site.
Glenna Bell is performing FRIDAY, JUNE 24TH, 2011at
Gizzy’s, 9-9:45 pm 16 W. 8th Street, New York New York 10011
http://www.gizzisnyc.com/gizzisdev/2011/06/legends-radio-event-2/
SUNDAY, JULY 10TH, 2011
Starving Artist Cafe 3 pm 249 City Island Avenue, Bronx New York 10464
FRIDAY, JULY 15TH, 2011
Godfrey Daniels Theater, Opening for Jack Williams! 8-8:30 pm
7 E. Fourth Street, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015
(215) 867-2390
FRIDAY. JULY 29
Banjo Jim’s, from 10-11 p.m 700 East 9th Street, New York, NY 10009
(212) 777-0869
FRIDAY, AUGUST 5TH, 2011
Hill Country Barbecue 7:15-8:45 pm, 30 West 26th Street, New York New York 10010
212-255-4544
*As a former educator myself, I have to give a shout-out to this dedicated teacher. Bell teaches writing to students at Houston Community College. Her students range from the usual starry-eyed youths and good-student grandmothers and those with learning disabilities to students in gangs, with criminal records, and who struggle in grinding poverty. They learn practical writing skills and hopefully a sense that life can be transcended, even if just for the space of a song. The inspiration is twofold: She’s learning that “no dream is too preposterous.” Awesome.
By bucko, on June 18th, 2011
In a reckless land…In a lawless place…Sometimes one man can make all the difference. –voice-over of trailer, The Miracle Rider
The story is an old one. Clichéd even. But satisfying.
Writer’s hopes for perfect manuscript leading to speedy publication, six-figure salary, film, and several homes around the world are killed in some suitably dramatic, bloody way. The writer, thereafter called “our hero,” must bury these hopes in the dark ground. Will our hero be driven to sitting at bars and banging a shot glass on the table saying “I coulda had a novel. I almost had a novel…”
Or…
Does our hero find the golden treasure hidden within the dashed hopes, an emblem of courage, new ideas, and future hopes? (Cue phoenix-from-the-ashes theme)
Does our hero have the courage to sit astride that bucking bronco of a novel idea and once again fight for Truth, Goodness, and a Novel from Beginning to The End?
Does our hero begin to feel the hero once more, the self-made protagonist who will best all odds, conquer all conflicts, and resolve all in a three-act structure? While looking really damn good in a hat, spurs, on a horse, and kissing the damsel in distress. (There has to be a damsel in there somewhere, just as there has to be a trusty sidekick. For which job position you may inquire, no experience required.)
Will the story of our hero writing a story come to a good end? Stay tuned for Episode 2: The Winding Trail of Doom and How to Get Out of It by Watching Tom Mix Fight Bad Guys in The Miracle Rider.
“There’s your contract.” — Tom Morgan, played by Tom Mix
By bucko, on May 30th, 2011
A mighty happy (um, late) birthday to Max Brand! He never thought much of his westerns between May 29, 1892 and May 12, 1944, but I can’t hold that against him for too long. If you had been named Frederick Schiller Faust, you might have wanted to be a high-falutin’ poet too.
Unlike many pulp western writers, Max Brand actually spent time out West, working as a cowhand, and he was no fop: he was also a war veteran. Brand was a prolific, swift-writing (12,000 words over a weekend) wordsmith and we’re not talking two-fisted shoot-’em-ups but moody West-as-state-of-mind epics.
The kind of epic where the man, acting in a manly fashion, is the stern gem set in the arid, harsh, windswept landscape.
Where the woman, waiting for her man in womanly fashion, infuses the sparkle of dewy lips and fresh, blushing cheeks to this self-same landscape.
Where roaring streams parted by rosy cliffs were code for men and women doing things together in manly and womanly fashion. (Okay, I can’t say for sure that’s what he was exactly writing about, but I think it’s pretty obvious.)
Where just the entrance of the good man–or the bad man, as below–was a signal for words that spun sunlight to gold that glinted off the shadows in men’s hearts.
Vespers was ringing faintly when William Benn crossed the piazza and turned down a western street. His horse slackened from a dogtrot to a walk and Benn himself blinked, for before him was a living wall of gold that seemed to be rolling from the rooftops to the dust and advancing upon him with a rush. It was the red-gold light of the sun, now about to sink. William Benn, like all men who live by their wits, was superstitious; for he who cheats his fellows is convinced, in that hidden corner of his soul where conscience has its uncomfortable abode, that there must be some power which cannot be overreached.
The Border Kid, by Max Brand, originally published in 1921
Max Brand–you can’t make up a guy like him.
|
|
Recent Comments