When Mayland Thompson was sitting there at the bar, he shouted that he wanted to be buried with a twelve-year-old girl. Leastways, he said that after he’d drunk three tankards of whiskey and got knifed in the shoulder by the barman, Morgan Freeman. Freeman, who could smoke a pipe for sixteen hours straight and sing like the Virgin Mary, who could shoot his old flintlock farther than Daniel Morgan while dancing a jig, who once drunk a barrel of the Swamp Fox’s “Swamp Elixir” and recited Christmas mass perfect, and who’s hobby was raping three-year-old men (believe me, soldier, he knew how to), Freeman, had knifed Thompson. I thinks it was over the fact that Thompson had just declared that he was dirtier hog that Freeman himself. Drunkards are always doing things like this. Now, soldier, don’t think for a minute that Freeman got away with that; believe me when I says that this was Thompson we’re talkin’ ‘bout. Soldier, when ye knife Mayland Thompson, don’t bother to say, “Sweet Jesus, help me,” ‘cause Thompson can draw a pistol faster than ye can blink.
So’s how does it get to be that Freeman lives? I’ll tell ye for a hard dollar.
Thanks, soldier.
Just so’s ye want to hear about how Freeman got away, soldier? I’ll tell ye, he had the mind to duck ‘cause Thompson could draw his pistol and fire before ye even blinked. Now, Thompson never misses, and he’s so shocked real quick when he does. Freeman had enough time to grab a musket from above the fireplace. Soldier, he ran that bayonet so quick through Thompson’s chest that ye heard his heart stop (and believe me, soldier, ye’ll know soon enough what it sounds like when a man’s heart stops). But, just ‘cause Thompson’s heart’s bleedin’ don’t mean that he ain’t alive. Thompson just pulls it out, wrenches it out o’ Freeman’s hands, and gives him his eternal damnation on Earth.
And that, soldier, is why no one as yet had had the nerve to fire the Thompson-Freeman musket that hangs just over yonder fireplace. No one ain’t ever cleaned it either. They says that if a rifleman ever touches that blood, he’s a cursed man. I ain’t never touched it, soldier, and I never will.
2 comments:
It works. I don't know why, but it just works.
I have found that there is an inherent risk in using vernacular, es
especially from a century before the writer's birth. You use it well, a la Flannery O'Conner, who could compress verbs and nouns into a single word, as part of the story itself. It's reads like a Civil War midrash.I wanted to know what happened. I guess that is why it "worked" for me.
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