The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (53 page)

Rance looked up guiltily toward Jesse James, who stared at him like a scientist checking a bug under a microscope.

“Marshmallow!”Jesse spat in disgust.

He tilted his own bottle to his lips and took a long draught. He threw the bottle over his shoulder and reached inside his vest for a sack of tobacco and a pack of cigarette papers. He opened the sack and expertly poured an exact amount on the paper, rolled it between thumb and two fingers into a neat cylinder, licked the edge, rolled it again, caught the string of the tobacco sack in his teeth and pulled it closed, twisted one end of the cigarette shut, pasted the other to his lower lip, scratched a big wooden match with his thumbnail, and lit up. He then threw the makings—sack, paper, and another match—over to Rance McGrew, who immediately started to open the sack with his teeth, got the string caught between two of his molars, sneezed, and after much laborious finagling managed to spill a small thumbnailful of tobacco onto the paper. He then kneaded, pressed, tamped, and licked, put the cigarette to his mouth, and discovered that the tobacco had run out of the open end.

Rance shamefacedly pried the string out of his teeth, then stopped to think about what to do with the empty piece of paper stuck to the side of his mouth.

Jesse decided it for him. He backhanded the paper into the air, then looked a little dolefully at McGrew, shook his head, and said, “You don’t do nothin’ well, do ya, McGrew?”

He took a deep luxurious drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke into Rance’s left eye. After waiting a moment for some reaction—and there was none except a small tear—he shook his head again.

“Don’t that rile ya?” he asked.

Rance smiled at him and coughed out a piece of tobacco.

“Nothin’ riles ya, does it?”Jesse James said. “You’re the most even-tempered dude I ever did meet. However,” he continued, blowing smoke out again, “I ain’t got no more time to be social, Marshal. I believe it’s time to come to a meetin’ of the minds.”

He took a step away from the bar and immediately the people at the table made a collective dash to neutral comers.

It was, Rance thought to himself, like every movie he’d ever seen—and he reflected further that this couldn’t be happening. Eventually he’d wake up. But he couldn’t wake up, because the thing went right on happening.

Jesse James nodded toward the frightened onlookers. “Why d’ya suppose they’re gettin’ under cover, marshal?”

Rance gulped. “I think the place is closing.” He looked around a little wildly. “Yep—it’s curfew time!”

Again he gulped, winked, smiled, and then with a kind of skipping gait headed toward the door. “Mighty nice meetin’ ya, Mr. James ...Jesse.”

He was at the swinging doors when Jesse’s voice stopped him.

“Marshal,” Jesse said, “jus’ stop right there!”

The voice was like a lasso that circled around Rance’s legs and held him tightly. He slowly turned to face Jesse, who had reached out with his foot and pulled a chair over.

“You wasn’t leavin’, was ya, Marshal?” Jesse asked as he sat down. “I mean ... you wasn’t jus’ gonna up and walk out, was ya?”

Rance smiled at him like some village idiot. “Nope,” he answered, “I was just wonderin’ if it was gonna rain.”

He turned to stare out very professionally toward the street, then turned back to Jesse. “Nope,” he said firmly, “it ain’t gonna rain.”

Jesse laughed, and then tipped his chair back. “D’ya know what I thought, Marshal?” he said. “I thought you was gonna play some kinda trick on me. Remember the time that bad guy had ya covered in the back and ya started out the swingin’ doors and ya swung one door back and knocked the gun outta his hand?”

“That was the opening show last season,” Rance interjected.

“Or how about when that rustlin’ gang had collected in here to bushwhack ya—ten or eleven of ‘em?”

Rance smiled in fond recollection. “Thirteen,” he said. “I was up for an Emmy on that one.”

Jesse nodded, and when he spoke he sounded grim. “That was when ya shot from the hip and brung down the chandelier.” He shook his head. “That was some shootin’, Marshal.”

Rance was wistful. “I did better the next week. Horse thief named McNasty. Shot a glass outta his hand, bullet ricocheted and hit his confederate out there on the porch. I got thirteen hundred pieces of mail on that one.”

Jesse nodded again. “I bet you did. I bet you did, indeed. Why, folks jus’ couldn’t help admirin’ a man of your talents.”

Then he laughed again—first a low chuckle, and then a tremendous booming explosion.

Again Rance smiled back at him with the kind of smile that on a baby indicates gas.

“Thing of it is, Marshall,” Jesse James continued, “thing of it is, I don’t reckon you ever fired a real gun in your life, did ya? Or hit a man in anger? Or mebbe even got hit in anger, yourself?” He leaned forward in the chair. “Tell me true, Marshal Ever ride a horse?”

Rance cleared his throat. “On occasion.”

“A real horse?”

“Well—” Rance fidgeted, scratching himself. “I happen to be allergic—hives.”

“Hives?”

Rance went through a series of extravagant gestures, indicating the torture of urticaria. “You know—itching. Cats give it to me, too.”

Jesse leaned back in his chair. “So ya don’t ride,” he said, “ya don’t shoot, ya don’t fight. Ya jus’ strut around wearin’ a phony badge and goin’ through the motions of killin’ off fellas like me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Rance said. “There was one episode when we let one of the James boys get off. It was kind of...kind of a complicated plot.”

He walked over toward Jesse James and pulled a chair up close to him. “It seems that there was a kid sister going to school in the East. She came out to visit him on the day he was supposed to be hanged. She appealed to me and I saw to it that he got a suspended sentence.”

Jesse stared at Rance, unsmiling. “I know about it,” Jesse said. “I also know how you captured ‘im. Jumped eight hundred feet off a cliff to land on the back of his hoss when he wasn’t lookin’.” He shook his head from side to side. “Now, c’mon, Marshal. You ever jump eight hundred feet off a cliff to land on a man’s hoss?”

Rance looked pale. “Heights...heights bother me,” he said weakly.

Jesse nodded. “That figgers. So ya see, Marshal—we had this meetin’, up there and all of us decided—my brother Frank and me, Billy the Kid, the Dalton boys, Sam Starr...quite a few of us—and the consensus was, Marshal...was that you wasn’t doin’ a thing for our good names. We had a little election up there and they chose me to come down and mebbe take a little shine offa your pants!”

Rance stared at him. “How’s that?” he asked.

“Don’cha get it? We see ya week after week shootin’, down this fella, shootin’ down that fella—capturin’ that bushwhacker, capturin’ that rustler—but alla time winnin’! Man, you jus’ don’t never lose. You’re the winnin’est fella ever come down the pike, and that’s for sure. So, me ‘n’ my friends—well, we figgered how it was about time that mebbe you lost one time!”

Rance swallowed hard. “That’s not such a bad idea. I could take it up with the producer.” His voice was hopeful.

Jesse shook his head. “I don’t think there’s time fer that,” he said firmly. “I think that mebbe if you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna have to lose right now!” He rose from the chair slowly and then kicked it away. “But I’ll tell ya what I’m gonna do, Marshal. I’m gonna play it square with ya. A whole helluva lot squarer than you ever played it with us. Face to face and no—how you call ’em?—stunt men.”

He pointed out toward the street. “Right out there on the main street—you ‘n’ me.”

Rance pointed to himself with a limp hand. “Me?” he asked.

“Right outside,” Jesse continued. “Me comin’ down one side of the street—you comin’ down the other.”

Rance gestured a little forlornly. “It’s been done before. You didn’t happen to see Gunfight at O.K Corral did you?”

Jesse James spat on the floor. “Lousy!” he said, like a judge pronouncing sentence.

“Didn’t care for it, huh?” Rance cleared his throat, tapped his fingertips together. “It’s always been my belief,” he said, “that when shooting a western—”

Jesse James lifted him up off his chair and placed him hard on his feet. “Let’s go, Marshal,” he said.

He gave him a shove and Rance stumbled out through the swinging doors, followed by Jesse and by the crowd in the saloon. Jesse shoved him again and he tumbled down the steps.

Again Rance thought: This must be the tail end of a bad dream. He’d wake up sleeping in his Jaguar. There—right there in front of those steps was where he had parked it. Only it wasn’t there now, of course.

Jesse gave him a push and pointed toward one end of the street. “You come around that corner,” he directed Rance, “and I’ll come around that one.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll let ya make the first move. Now, nothin’ could be fairer than that, Marshal, could it?”

“Oh, my, no,” Rance answered. “No, indeed. Nothing at all.” Then he very busily looked at his wristwatch. “How about tomorrow afternoon—same time?”

This time Jesse pushed him with more verve and Rance fell over his own elevator boots, banging his knees as he landed.

“
This afternoon!
” Jesse said to the U. S. Marshal in the dust. “
Right now!
”

Rance was reasonably sure that he could never rise to his feet again, let alone get through the long walk to the spot where he would make both his entrance and ultimately his exit. But, utilizing some hidden will power, he did manage to right himself and was surprised to find himself walking toward the end of the street. True, his legs felt like two pillars of cement and his heart beat so loudly he was sure Jesse James could hear it. And true, too, he had no intention of coming back. He was quite certain that when he turned the corner at the far end of the street, he’d find a way to get the hell out of there.

A moment later, his plans went to pot. A barbed wire fence sealed off the area around the corner. There was simply no place to go. Rance peeked out around the corner and saw Jesse coming toward him, a few hundred feet away. “Stunt man,” Rance whispered. “Oh, stunt man!”

Then, inexplicably, Rance found himself making the big move around the corner. It was like stepping into an icy shower. But something had given him momentum and he found himself walking down the street. He’d done it a hundred times before, but this was different. Good had always triumphed, because evil had always faced him with one of its arms tied behind its back. He was conscious, too, that he was completely unable to swagger at this moment, and swagger had been one of the hallmarks of Rance McGrew. No one in the business—Wyatt Earp, Paladin, Marshal Dillon—none of them could swagger like Rance McGrew—and he’d had the added handicap of uplifts and extra-high heels.

Through the sweat, the dust, and the blinding sun, Rance could see Jesse getting closer to him. They were perhaps twenty feet apart now. “Go ahead,” Jesse invited. “Reach!”

Rance’s look was positively dyspeptic. His momentum stopped. He started to back up.

“I’m gonna count to three,” Jesse said.

“This is ridiculous,” Rance responded, continuing to back off. “It
never
happens this way.”

“One ...” Jesse said incisively.

The sweat poured down Rance McGrew’s arms. “In over a hundred episodes,” he said plaintively, “Rance McGrew never got shot down—not even nicked.”

“Two ...” Jesse James’s voice was a bell tolling.

“I didn’t even want to be in this series,” Rance said as he backed up against a black horse-drawn hearse. “I wouldn’t have even taken it on if it hadn’t been for the residuals.”

“Three!”

Rance looked briefly over his shoulder to see what had impeded his backward motion, and sweat showered off his face when he saw the hearse.

“The residuals, plus the fact that they used my own name as the central character.”

“Reach!” Jesse said. “I mean right now!”

“Oh, my God!” Rance sobbed. “What you’re going to do to the youth of America!” Then he half closed his eyes and went grabbing with both hands for the gun in the holster, fully expecting the hot screaming impact of a bullet in his stomach. He heard the gasp of the onlookers, and, still fumbling for his gun, he looked up briefly to see Jesse James holding his own six-gun out, pointing straight at him.

Jesse shook his head. ‘‘Jus’ like I figgered,” he said—almost with disappointment. “This guy couldn’t outdraw a crayon.”

Tears rolled down Rance’s face. “Jesse,” he said, holding out his hand supplicatingly, his own six-gun now dangling from his finger, ‘‘Jesse...give me a break... Will you give me a break, Jesse?” He sank to his knees, crying softly. “Jesse...I’m too young to die, and I’ve got a mother, Jesse. I’ve got a sweet little old mother who depends on me for her support.” He let his gun fall to the ground, then he pushed it through the dust toward Jesse James. “Here...take it—genuine pearl on the handle. It was sent to me by a fan club in the Bronx. Take anything, Jesse—take everything.”

Jesse looked at him coldly. “Ya say ya got nominated fer an Emmy? Man—you can’t act any better’n ya can draw!”

Rance felt a surge of hope when no bullet plowed through his body. “What about it, Jesse?” he entreated. “Will you give me a break? I’ll do anything you say. Anything at all. I mean it—anything. You name it—I’ll do it!”

The gun in Jesse’s hand was lowered to his side. He stared at Rance thoughtfully. “Anything?” he inquired.

“Name it!”

Jesse looked off reflectively and rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand. “Marshal,” he said quietly, ‘‘we ain’t a long ways off from a bargain.” He picked tentatively at his teeth. “I ain’t jus’ sure exactly what it is that I want—but I’ll think about it some.”

Rance held his breath. “You mean...you mean you’re not going to shoot me down?”

Jesse James shook his head. “Nope. But I’ll tell ya what I will do. I’ll see to it that you’re gonna have to play it mighty careful from now on.” He made a gesture toward the sky. “We may be stiffs up there—but we’re sensitive.”

Again he took out the makings, and as he walked back toward his horse he deftly and gracefully fashioned a cigarette. Once he stopped and looked back toward Rance. “I’ll think about it some,” he said, and lighted the cigarette. “I’ll think about it some.” And right in front of Rance McGrew’s eyes he disappeared.