10 Gallon Hats O’ Blood

            A Novel by Tom Miller

            PART 3 - CHAPTER 16

            America’s Birthday - July 4th - The Next Day

            We got a problem," said the sheriff.

            "What’s that?" asked the executioner.

            "How we gonna’ hang this bosom?"

            "We’ll just… I don’t know… maybe tie up the nipple there…"

            "That rope’s too thick," said the sheriff.

            "What if’n we shoot it?" suggested the executioner.

            "You can’t go and shoot a bosom. It ain’t right. The lawful way to deal with a murderer is to hang him."

            "It don’t weigh but a few pounds. Maybe we could get some yarn or string. That would be thin enough to get around that nipple, I bet." The sheriff looked out on the crowd who had assembled to see justice served. "Anybody got a piece of yarn out there?" He shouted.

            "I got some yarn," replied Ethel May, the lady who ran the Yarn store. "How much you need?"

            "I don’t rightly know," said the sheriff. He turned to the executioner. "What do you think? About twenty feet or so?"

            "Well," the executioner replied, "We got to have a good five or six inches to wrap up the nipple. Then, we got to get the yarn over that tree branch, and another four feet to wrap it to your horse there, Little Mo. I figure… yeah… about twenty feet should do it."

            The sheriff turned back to the crowd and yelled to the yarn lady, "’Bout twenty feet, yarn lady." She pulled twenty feet of yarn out of her purse and snipped it off with her shears. Then she brought it over and handed it to the executioner who secured four feet of the yarn to Little Mo’s neck. He tied it on there good and tight, so the bosom wouldn’t come loose during the hanging. Then he tossed the other end over the tree branch. He got the end and began wrapping it around the nipple of the torn-off breast of Sammy "Breastman" Kates. The horse was beginning to asphyxiate, but nobody seemed to notice.

            Secretly, Ed "Mule Butt" Cracky, Reddog "Bluedog" Yellowdog, and Arthur "No Balls Hanging" McGillicutty were hidden behind a pile of rubble, watching the proceedings. Reddog had tears welling up in his eyes.

            "Goddamn it, Ed. They’s gonna’ hang the Breastman right in front of us. What is we gonna’ do?"

            "There’s nothing we can do, dog. That fuckin’ sheriff done kilt half our gang off ‘cept for us. So we’s gonna sit right here and watch the Breastman hang. That’ll make us mad. And when we’s mad, we kill. We’ll kill that fuckin’ sheriff dead where he stands, and we’ll do it for Sammy."

            "And Lippy and Farlo too," added No Balls.

            "That’s right," said Ed. "Lippy and Farlo too."

            The bosom was on a wooden platform and the yarn was taught. The executioner said the last words to the bosom.

            "Sammy ‘Breastman’ Kates, you are hereby charged with murder, thievery, tittery, and the killin’ of one Whore Betty. For the crimes you brung to our good town of Flatsacks, We’re hangin’ you. Any last words before you meet your maker?"

            The bosom was still and cold.

            "Very well," The Executioner said. "May God cleanse your dirty soul at the pearly gates, you ugly fuckin’ tit." Suddenly, Little Mo fell over dead, and the bosom rose off the platform about four feet and hung.

            There was applause.

            Later in the town tavern, the sheriff downed another whiskey. And then he downed another. And Grizzard the Rip kept servin’ them up. He knew when a man needed the comforts of alcohol to ease his troubles.

            "She was a good woman, Grizzard," the sheriff said. "She did things for me that no other woman ever done before."

            "I know," said Grizzard. "I know."

            "Me too," shouted one of the card players.

            "I had her too," said the gentleman seated at the end of the bar.

            "Yup," said Grizzard. "I remember the time she put a whip handle in my ass. She was something special all right."

            "Me too," shouted the card player.

            "Yeah," said the gentleman seated at the end of the bar, "the whip handle."

            "And the way she looked at me with those purty blues," said the sheriff. "I think it was true love."

            "That’s what it was," said Grizzard. "Yes sir."

            "True love," shouted the card player.

            "I’ll drink to that," said the gentleman at the end of the bar, and he raised his glass. "She gave us all true love. God bless the West." He downed the drink and poured another. So did the Sheriff.

            "You gonna’ kill them others?" Grizzard asked.

            "Justice will be served," replied the sheriff, somberly. And then a mean look crept into his eyes. "For what they done," he said, "Those men will die, and I’m the man to kill ‘em, yes I am." He swallowed the last of his whiskey and put on his hat.

            "Yore gonna’ need some help," said Grizzard. "I know how to pour a drink, but I could be a good lawman, too. You need somebody like me to watch yore back. How’s about you make me a deputy. I got good aim and a black heart. I’m drunk enough to keep the law, too. What do you say?"

            "Poof," said the sheriff. "Yore a deputy." He reached in his pocket pulled out a silver star, and pinned it on the bartender. Then he vomited a puddle of yak and fell face first into it.

            Simultaneously, Bloody Stump O’ Bones, the piano man, played his last notes with the bludgeoned remains of his face and double penis, and pitched off the bench. He rolled across the floor, out through the swinging doors, and into the road where he was struck by a horse-drawn wagon carrying a load of dynamite. The horse made an abrupt stop causing the wagon wheel to scrape against a fragment of granite, thus producing a spark. The explosion propelled the torso of the piano player up into the air and at the top of the arc, he blew up in a festive display of color and light.

            And that's how fireworks came to be.