DAVID KLASOVSKY
The Chadron to Chicago Cowboy race, a sidelight of Chicago’s 1893 World Columbian Exposition, was won by one James Riley. Riley, a mixed race native of Newton, Kansas was a known gunslinger (and, intriguingly, a nephew by marriage of editor and author L. Frank Baum). What became of him is unknown, but his moniker was later used as an alias by one Doc Middleton, a notorious horse thief of the era. On Middleton’s Death Certificate, the Riley name is just legible, but overwritten in a longhand scrawl. The correction has been initialed “J.J.” (likely by “Jersey Jeff” Walsh, a U.S. Marshal who knew Middleton well).
The following is the considerably condensed, free translation of an anonymous tale found in the November 1910 edition of Western Aegis, a short lived, multi-lingual literary magazine. Published in Oakland, California and dedicated to aggrandizing the pioneers, poets, hucksters and gunfighters of the rapidly vanishing frontier, “The Aegis” seems rather to have been intended for distribution on the Indian Reservations of the Great Plains. This story, “James Riley: Son of Kansas”, was written mostly in a free verse version of the Cegiha Siouan language, with rhyming couplets at the end of each stanza; I’ve done my best to preserve the story elements while enhancing the “readability.” i.e. I’ve removed the rather forced rhyming scheme and somewhat modernized the language. Portions written in Ogallala and Lakota dialects were also rendered into English.
1
along a weedy railroad spur, on the outskirts of a small town, kicking up dust: zephyrs at play. They’re part of an airhead crew who doze and nod in abandoned factories, or up among the rafters of formerly fine homes. Left to themselves, these breezes poke about quietly, investigating nooks and crannies and corridors. They’re putterers by inclination.
But imagine: not far away: rising voices, a cough of bitter laughter; and then, BANG! a noise like a twig breaking, only powers of ten louder. Some of the lonelier winds drift over to check it out.
Out back of the livery stable, a zephyr brushes over a twisting coil, a pulsating knot of something that feels elemental, like a sister wind bound-up in the dust of the world.
2
The Gordian knot at her feet, fallen in a pile of straw and horseshit, that’s me. Leaking tears and blood, piss and vomit; crying for the first time since Kansas. I’m trying to stuff my innards back into the hole in my midsection. It hurts, a lot.
The horses rear and kick in their stalls; they’d bolt if they weren’t locked in. Stamping and snorting, they provide the rhythm track to my swan song, my aeolian mode requiem in the key of gee-whiz-where’d-I-go-wrong. I can’t catch my breath. I’m wheezing like a broken kazoo.
3
A wild-eyed dandy, all babyfat and bad breath, a cowardly twerp brave-brave-brave with a shotgun in his hand, a hater wanting the world to understand the extent of his commitment to love, surprised me whilst takin’ a leak. He musta interperted my bemused smirk as a dis. His finger twitched. A statement was made: kinda an edgy, out-of-control statement.
There’s this girl, y’see. Working the afternoon shift at the shithole saloon that’s the crown jewel of social establishments in this sorry ass ghost town. A girl capable of some brand of liquory love, I suppose, of taunting bullies, of dragging empty brags out of empty drunks, egging them on into folly. All for a giggle. Did she unfurl her petticoats amid the leaky kegs and lost and found items in the storeroom behind the bar? I don’t know, maybe she’s changed.
4
The lady was a familiar spirit of our household coming up, my sister’s best friend, don’t you know. I grew up smelling their sweat and sex and soapy smells. They were babes-in-arms, ever curious about life: girls without borders.
When I was throwing my letters and laundry into my saddlebags, Sis ran up. She managed to evade bidding me farewell; asked politely if I’d look up Jenny- should I pass this way. Gee whiz, why not? Time and distance are of no constraints to a man who’s being hunted like a dog. And it’s big news, I’m to convey: nuptials upcoming! Sis is marrying a man who can afford the luxury of having no curiosity whatsoever.
5
In Chadron, Jenny’s tears ran mascara black. She tried to rope me in for a dose of consolation. Hey, look who’s a growed up handsome man, she whispered. It was sad: didja ever see a drover crack the whip over a tired mare?
Well, maybe I was wrong not to look deeper into her scarred heart. But since we happened, darling, there’s certain riddles I don’t attempt to untangle. That’s what’s so fucking hilarious about lying here, twisted up like a snake in heat; I’m as innocent as powder burns on a suicide’s hands.
6
The zephyr sees me as a faintly sputtering ember or a mildly luminous bubble breaking from wet clay. I cast some glow on a dimension she’s only vaguely noticed before. The place where people are. An emptier quadrant of the grid of life.
