MAN WITH TWO LIVES

It was July the Fourth and Nacogdoches, the oldest town in Texas, was hung with banners declaring the holiday. The old man read them and continued walking. He was not in a festive mood at all. It was too hot and he was too old. He continued around the square toward the general store.

Yes, too hot and too old, but he kept going full steam ahead, for this was how he had always lived, and he knew no other way.

Sometimes, especially when it was hot he had noticed, he thought perhaps it would have been better had he really died in that saloon facedown on the card table; really been buried in a good hard box in that dark, rocky ground.

Certainly it would have been better than this. Less painful than this; wasting away of old age, being a man out of place and time, a nobody. Considering the fact that in his first life he had been very important made this all the worse.

Once he had carried a brace of revolvers, but now it was all he could do to carry himself down the street.

Once his calm voice was enough to quiet violent men in a Wild West saloon, but now he did well to talk above the screams of his grandchildren.

Sometimes he considered telling family and friends who he really was. But who would believe him? They would think he had finally gone over the lip.

No. They would not believe him and there was no way for him to prove otherwise. Even digging up the grave wouldn’t help. Inside they would find a rotted corpse, and though not his, how would he prove to the contrary? There just wasn’t any way he could convince people he was that famous man about whom stories were told and books were written.

John Spradley, sheriff of Nacogdoches, strolled by and nodded at him. "How’re you doing, Jim?"

"Fine, fine," he said, but wanted to yell, "Miserable, that’s how I’m doing. I was a famous man in my time and now no one even knows who I am."

But he said nothing beyond his false reply. Just walked on, toting his memories like a peddler toting his sack.

God, but it was hard to believe he had begun a new life thirty-eight years ago. Here it was 1914 and he remembered that day as if it were yesterday. he should. He had had the rare honor of attending his own funeral and walking away.

In those days he had been a famous gunhand, a man known far and wide as a great pistoleer. But his hand was slowing and his eyes were dimming. Not so unusual for a man in his late thirties, but very disconcerting for a man whose life depended on the speed of his draw, the accuracy of his aim.

He was in Dakota Territory in those days, and as always, his reputation had preceded him. It was a newly formed mining town where he stopped, and immediately his arrival set some concerned parties to buzzing. In the past he had had a reputation as a town tamer, and that just wouldn’t do. Not when a handful of folks had it going good for them with illicit gambling and vice. They feared he’d clean up the town, institute law and order.

Rumor of that got around to him and he chuckled. No, he was through cleaning up towns, he’d had his fill of town marshaling. But he decided to use that to his advantage.

There was a guy named Varnes who probably had the biggest bite in the town, and more to lose than anyone should law and order be established and enforced. He went directly to Varnes and did not mince words.

"Varnes," he said, "I’ll tell you this, and tell you straight. I’m thinking about cleaning up this rathole and making it decent. But I can make a deal with you. I’m a bit tired of all this, and to tell you the truth, I fear this just might be my last camp. So, before one of your hired guns kills me, I’m going to arrange it so you can get it done proper."

He could still remember the way Varnes looked at him, mouth open, eyes startled.

"No," he told Varnes, "I’m not about to commit suicide. I won’t make it that easy for you, but I do have a plan. A plan that’ll leave the town to you and free of my reputation."

The plan was simple: Varnes was to help him fake his death. For insurance, in case Varnes decided to make it for real, Varnes was to sign out a statement of his involvement beforehand and leave it with Charlie Utter, a friend of Jim’s. Once the deal was pulled off, Charlie was to return the paper to Varnes to do as he chose.

If Charlie did not return the paper, and should Varnes appear to be in hot water, he could always have the body exhumed to prove that the man in question was not there, and had not actually been murdered.

To do the deed, and to keep his hands out of it, Varnes had hired a cross-eyed drunk to do the shooting; gave him a snootful of whiskey and a gun full of defective cartridges, though the one that would fall under the hammer was designed to go pop. That would make the assassination appear real to any witnesses in the saloon.

The old man laughed thinking back on it. He remembered how he had sat with his back to the door for the first time ever, and how right on schedule the drunk had entered and walked up behind him. "Take that," the drunk has said pulling and firing his pistol, and he, the great gunman, who had some acting experience from a Wild West show, fell forward on the table with a moan.

So he lay there on his side until the doctor came in–a man on Varnes’s payroll. The doctor quickly pronounced him dead, and with the aid of Charlie, carried him away.

A few days later, after hiding out in Charlie’s tent, playing hand after hand of poker, he had to perform an even greater acting job–be the corpse t his own funeral.

Charlie, the doctor, and Varnes helped him into a coffin and carried him out to be put on display. It was an odd feeling to have all those people passing by, and him trying to concentrate on shallow breathing and not moving a muscle, but Charlie had helped by not allowing viewers to linger, kept saying, "Move on, please, there are a lot of folks that want to pay their respects." He could still hear some of the talking as they passed.

"Isn’t he lifelike?"

"He has a smile on his lips."

"Oh, did you see that? Didn’t he breathe?"

"Hell no, he didn’t breathe. He’s dead and he looks it."

"Prettiest corpse I’ve ever seen."

And then they placed the lid on him and put him six feet down, with Charlie and Varnes supervising.

It was no mean trick to relax in the darkness, breathe easily and calmly while dirt clods sounded n the lid of the box, while it grew warm and sweaty within. He still remembered that moment, remembered wanting to kick and yell, scream out, "The deal is off!"

But he had remained calm, and shortly thereafter he heard the sound of spades, then hands on the box, and up he came.

Once out of the coffin, he had Charlie return Varnes’s affidavit, and made Charlie promise to let him "stay dead."

"You’ve got it, old pard," Charlie told him. "You’re a corpse from here out."

And Charlie had lived by his word. For that matter, so had Varnes. And why not? He had gotten what he wanted most, control of Deadwood, and to reveal that the great gunman was still alive would have made him a fool.

A few years later Jim had read a newspaper account of "his" body having been dug up–due to the expansion of Deadwood–and reburied. The body had been examined for some ghoulish reason, and good old Charlie had been on hand to state that "The body still maintained its features, and even the pleatings in the dress shirt were intact."

Since there were a number of witnesses present, Jim wondered just whose body Charlie had put in that coffin to substitute for him. He sort of hoped it was Varnes.

Yes, Charlie had been a true friend to the end. And perhaps that was what he missed most, friends like Charlie. He had never seen him again after that day at the grave site, for he had left Deadwood, shaved his mustache, cut his long hair, and ventured down South to eventually end up in Nacogdoches, Texas.

If anyone had told him that someday he’d give up his guns and meet up with some Texas farm girl and become a farmer, he’d have shot them on the spot. But that was exactly what had happened. He and Mattie had married, raised a beautiful daughter who married in turn and was raising his two lovely grandchildren, a boy and a girl.

Sometimes he wished he’d told Mattie who he really was, instead of making up a past for her. She would have believed him.

But he hadn’t told her, and now she was gone.

God, but he missed her.

He strolled into the general store and bought a bag of hard rock candy and a few peppermints.

"Thank you, Mr. Butler," the storekeeper said.

"You’re welcome," Jim said, and he strolled out, thinking, in my prime folks used to stand and stare when I walked in. Not only because of my reputation as a gunman, but because I was a fine figure of a man, tall and clear-eyed. Now I’m bent and half blind and do good to get a nod and a smile.

Sometimes he wished he’d really died that day in Deadwood, gone out at the top of his form.

He walked around the square and headed north down the tree-lined streets, toward his daughter’s house.

After a while he stepped into her yard and started for the door, sighing heavily as he went.

"Grandpa!" came a voice from the side of the house. Turning, he saw nine-year-old Jimmy darting toward him, and not far behind came his five-year-old granddaughter, Lottie, who was now saying, "Gwanpa, Gwanpa," fast as revolver fire.

Stooping, his old bones creaking as he did, he took them in his arms, hugged them close.

"What you got in the sack, Grandpa?" Jimmy asked. "What you got?"

"Sack?" the old man said, as though he had not noticed it before. "What sack?"

"Oh, Grandpa," Jimmy said.

"Oh, Gwanpa," Lottie echoed.

Jim laughed and stood, opened his bag and poured candy into the two sets of hands that greedily reached up.

"You’ll spoil them," came a voice, and he turned to see his daughter standing in the doorway. My, but she was the spitting image of her mother, a beautiful woman. 

Especially with her hands on her hips like that, and that half-concerned look on her face.

"I certainly hope so," Jim said. "What grandbabies are for."

She smiled. "Children, put the candy up until after supper. Come into this house, all three of you. Let’s eat. Right now! Time for supper."

The children ran ahead of him, and he watched them with pride. Following them inside, he went to the dinner table, hung his hat on the back of a chair as he sat. His son-in-law, Bob, was already at the table and he said, "Hi, Dad. Got you favorite today, mashed potatoes."

"Bring ‘em on," the old man said with a grin.

After dinner, while June washed the dishes and Bob fed the chickens out back, he seated himself on the front porch swing and lit his pipe.

The evening had brought a bit of a cool spell with it, and it was a comfortable contrast to the muggy heat of the earlier day.

The grandchildren came out on the porch to bathe in the aroma of his pipe smoke. Little Lottie, making quite a chore of it, climbed up on his knee and hugged him. Jimmy sat beside him on the swing.

"Going to stay the night, Grandpa?" Jimmy asked.

"I think so."

Somewhere, not far away, a horde of firecrackers went off in celebration of the Fourth of July. They sounded like gunfire, and for a moment the old man’s thoughts went back to the old days; back to when he had pulled his revolvers and heard them sing.

Yes, sometimes he wished he had died that day in the Ten Spot saloon.

"I wuv you Gwanpa," Lottie said.

And sometimes not, he thought, smiling at the pretty little girl.

"Grandpa," Jimmy said, "tell us a story."

The old man smiled, and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "I’ll tell you a story, a secret one. Did you know that I’m really Wild Bill Hickok?"

"Oh Grandpa," Jimmy said. "He’s dead."

The old man laughed again. "Yes," he said taking Lottie under one arm and Jimmy under the other. "I suppose he is."

"I wuv you Gwanpa," Lottie repeated.

"And I love you too," the old man said, and he told them a story. But it had nothing to do with Wild Bill Hickok.

© 1994 Joe R. Lansdale.
"Man With Two Lives" was originally published in the Doubleday Books anthology Roundup. It later appeared in Writer of the Purple Rage, a collection of Lansdale’s short stories published by Carroll & Graf.