Get the Job Done

     Dr. Dial-Driver's Creative Writing for the Popular Market is the final creative writing course left for those RSU English majors who made their minor Creative Writing. It's basically genre fiction, which is fun to explore. That two-thirds of the class are computer-science people is a pain (this class was originally called Writing Video Games), though it provides examples of what we're trying not to do.
     This flashfiction assignment was ghostwriting practice; we were given a random selection of six elements - plot, character, character relationship, setting, and scraps of dialogue and background info. Then we had to turn them into a two-page Western. I was definitely thinking of a Clint Eastwood/Firefly vibe while working on this.

     “Remember those days when we were together? Before you changed?”

     Jack McClain rode through the dusty town of Yatesville, the scalding sunlight roasting everything in sight. It didn’t improve his mood much. Replaying his wife Maggie’s forlorn questioning about their relationship wasn’t helping with the current task at hand, either. That task was to apprehend one Garth Boggs. Yatesville was a three-day ride from their homestead, but bounty hunting was a job. It was difficult to balance when there were problems at home to sort out. Glimpses of corruption of various types were seen in almost every building he passed as he pulled up at the saloon. As long as the drinks kept coming, his relationship with Henry the barkeep were fine. When they weren’t – things were strained, likely because of that time years ago when Jack had to pull Henry into the ranks of the freshly-incarcerated. It was about a year before he and Maggie were hitched – most men would reckon her as pulchritude if it weren’t for that scar ‘long her cheek. So he laid a claim, her drifting days were finished, and it had worked out pretty well. The dubious business dealings of the Yatesvillains wasn’t his problem; keeping a low body count of uninvolved persons was.

     “What the hell’s this?” Jack frowned at his beer after tasting it. ”Don’t look normal.”

     “New truck at a discount. Cain’t say properly th’ name, sold by some German fella out of St. Louis.” Henry slid his Remington revolver across the tabletop and whipped out the lopped-off Winchester underneath the bar. The cowhands in the corner – the only other souls in the establishment at the moment - quit their hand of poker and slunk under their chairs.

     Boggs had entered the saloon.

     Jack whipped around, slinging the mug of beer into Boggs’s face while scooping up the Remington. Blood dripped from a gash over Boggs’s forehead into one eye, and it mixed with the tears and beer droplets running down his face. None of that kept him from swinging the Bowie knife towards Jack’s throatal region.

     Henry emptied the Winchester into Boggs’s hip, and Jack had already pegged his right arm. He was beginning to unholster his Smith & Wesson, just in case, when Henry vaulted over the countertop and snapped Boggs’s left arm.

     “Damn - what’d ya do that for?”
     “You know how much those mugs cost to replace?” Henry snorted. “And it’ll cause you trouble, explainin’ the condition he was hauled up to Wichita in.”

Jack ignored this reply and hoisted Boggs’s unconscious form towards the livery stable where he’d kept the farm wagon, staggering and almost faltering under the weight. Once the cargo was deposited, he retraced his path back to the saloon.

     “You’ll need that, I reckon,” he said to Boggs, flipping the outlaw’s hat into the wagon bed. “No need t’ git overheated any more’n can be helped.”

     “Thank ye,” Boggs whispered.

     “Changed for the better, I hope, Maggie,” he muttered as the horse plodded along some time later, not realizing he was speaking aloud. “Or at least that’s a start, anyway, ain’t it?”

     “It’s a sight better than leavin’ me daid,” Boggs answered from the back. “Who’s Maggie?” 

     Jack ignored him.