Mad Amos Malone

Ghost Wind

Not just Native Americans but many traditional cultures believe that every manifestation of Nature is possessed of a spirit. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tree, a rock, a river, or a cricket, the lowest meadow or the highest mountain. In these mythologies everything is alive in some fashion and therefore deserving of respect and perhaps, depending on its nature, propitiation. The Makonde, a tribe of modest dimension in East Africa, not only have a name for such spirits (shetani), but their best artisans turn blackwood into spirit sculptures of exquisitely terrifying proportions.

Many such communities believe in an “ill wind” far more deeply than our casual saying is meant to imply. But imagine: If an ill wind is a spirit, then what is the spirit of the spirit? If a tree has a soul, what lies beyond that?

And would we want to encounter it…?

“I’m not going in there.”

Barker’s manicured fingers rolled and twisted like a nervous baker kneading invisible dough. “But you got to, Doc. The man’s plain ill. Ain’t there an oath or somethin’ about how you got to take care of a body when they’re sick?”

“A human being, yes.” A wizened Doc Stanton kept his distance from the door that either led to room 12 of Bales Barker’s hotel or to Hell. “I’m just not sure that the thing reposing within is human.”

Outside, the mournful breeze that had been blowing all morning had picked up, sending papers and other debris whipping down Main Street.

“He’s human enough.” Both men turned to look at Hearts Doland, who had emerged from bed considerably earlier than was the professional gambler’s wont. Whip-thin of body, mien, and mustache, he calmly returned the questioning stares of the doctor and the owner of the venerable establishment. “Two days ago Addie the Well spent the night with him. That not-so-good woman lies resting still in her bed, sleeping off the aftereffects of what I am told was a profitable but wearying encounter. I had occasion to speak to her about the evening in question as she was dragging her way up the stairs. It is plain from the brief words we had that she would testify to his humanness, exceptional though it might be.”

Still wringing his hands, a pleading Barker turned back to the town physician. “You see, Doc? You’re obligated to treat him. You got to make him well. It’s your sacred duty. It’s the right thing to do. The poor man is suffering, Doc!”

Stanton’s gaze narrowed behind his wire-rim glasses. “You want him out of your hotel really badly, don’t you?”

Barker met the older man’s stare. “Please, Doc. You gotta help him. You gotta help me. When he sleeps, he snores, and when he snores, the vibration starts to workin’ the nails out o’ the walls and the floor beams. If he coughs, the sound wakes every guest in the place and the horses in the stable next door try to bolt. And if he blows his nose— if blows his nose…” The hotel owner shuddered. “You don’t wanna know, Doc.”

Stanton straightened his trim, elderly frame. “I am a trained physician, my good man. Cum laude Boston University of Medicine. A description of mere nasal expectoration, however extreme, would not intimidate me.”

Barker nodded toward the closed door to room 12. “Then for the love of mercy, Doc, go in there and see to the poor traveler — before he brings my place down around my ears! I’ve had four transit customers left already this week because of his roaring and snuffling.”

The doctor’s lips tightened. “Very well then.” He took a deep breath. “I expect you are right: an oath is an oath.” He faced the door, then glanced back. “I would be beholden to both you gentlemen if you would accompany me. To, um, bear witness to, um, whatever treatment it may be required that I apply.”

The others hesitated. Then Bales shrugged. “It’s my hotel. I reckon I’ve no option in the matter.” Beside him, Doland blew a puff of imaginary cigar smoke.

“My life is all a gamble anyway. I will have your back, Doc.”

The door to room 12 was not locked. There was neither reason nor need why it should be. No one in their right or even their wrong mind who knew anything of its present occupant would have thought to enter with malice in mind.

Mad Amos Malone lay sprawled across two iron-frame beds that, though pushed together, were still insufficient to accommodate his considerable bulk. Emerging from the prodigious eruption of gray-peppered black hirsuteness lying at the head of the two beds, a thunderous great concatenation of torso, arms, and legs sprawled across the pair of groaning mattresses. The prone mountain man was clad in rough red long johns that had been deeply stained by use, experience, and a plethora of fluids best left unidentified. Twin columns of callused flesh, his bare feet hung well over the bottom of the beds.

On an end table to the right of the recumbent figure stood a flowery ceramic water pitcher, a tall glass, a bottle of Dr. Vanhoffer’s Viennese laudanum, and half a cigar. A few personal accoutrements, including a Sharps rifle, lay in a corner. While not overpowering, the general vapors in the room were less than salutary. Conscious of his professional oath, Stanton held tight to his medical bag as he approached the foot of the bed. Following directly, Doland and Barker were mindful of the door that had been left open to the hallway.

Leaning toward the conjoined beds, the doctor adjusted his glasses. “He’s asleep.” Having rendered this verdict, he turned to go.

From deep within a chest cavity of awesome dimension, a voice rumbled, as if from the farthest reaches of Mammoth Cave, “No I ain’t.”

Compelled to halt, Stanton cleared his throat. “I am Dr. Elias John Stanton. How—how are you feeling today, Mr. Malone?”

Bushy brows drew back and eyes fixed on the solicitous physician. “Like I been glued to a teat suckin’ tar instead o’ milk, Doc. What you got fer thet?”

“Um, a dilute solution of appropriate spirits might help to alleviate your discomfort, sir, by acting to thin the mucus that presently—”

“Spirits!” the giant mountain man bellowed, sitting up with such alacrity that Stanton threw up an arm to shield himself while stumbling backward. From the hallway to which they had precipitously withdrawn, the hotel owner and the town’s resident professional gambler looked on apprehensively.

“I knew somethin’ was preyin’ on me. Spirits!”

To Stanton’s credit he had not joined his companions in hasty flight. He did, however, edge aside as the room’s enormous occupant sat up, stood up (having to bend to ensure that his head would not damage the ceiling), and hurried to peer out the nearest window.

“I knew I heerd it! I knew!” Looking back and down, he locked eyes with the doctor. “Don’t you hear it, too, noble member of the Asklepiades?”

Stanton held his ground. “Hear what, sir?”

“Why, the wind! The wind, friend!”

The doctor glanced back toward the open doorway. Barker and Doland exchanged a glance, then shrugged. “Yes, Mr. Malone,” Stanton avowed, “we all, um, hear the wind.” Displaying bravery comparable to that exhibited by the men of Pickett’s Charge, he moved close enough to place a reassuring hand on the center of the giant’s lower back. The rough material of the wool long johns seemed to prickle against the doctor’s open palm. “Mr. Malone, sir, it may be that your illness is affecting your judgment. If you would lie back down again, I shall endeavor to—”

“No time, no time!” Snorting through the noble promontory centered on his bearded face, Malone bounded across the room and began pulling on his buckskins. “Thet wind: you hear it but you don’t hear it. You feel it but you don’t understand it. It’s got to be stopped, and stopped right quick, or it’ll shred this town like a blind pig goin’ through a reaper.”

More concerned now than ever about his incipient patient’s state of mind, Stanton tried to reassure the giant as shirt followed pants. “Mr. Malone, sir, it is only the wind. Nothing to get alarmed about. Here south of Denver on the east front of the Rockies, wind is a feature of daily life. We are quite used to it even if you are not, and being used to it, we are hardly alarmed by its occurrence.”

Malone looked up from pulling on a boot. “Well, you ought to be. This ain’t no ordinary wind that’s comin’, friend.” Eyes like black diamonds flashed. “‘Used to wind’? Why, let me tell you, Doc. I know the wind. I’ve done felt the Bayamo blowing hard off the coast of Cuba, and suffered the Harmattan while stuck atop a complainin’ camel. I’ve sailed through the Levant round the Canaries and shouted insults at the Mistral for delayin’ me in Marseille. I’ve fought the Ostria on behalf of the Turk, sucked up the Sirocco off of Tripoli, and stood arms akimbo while I let the Squamish scour my pits right close to where Vancouver first set his stick. I know the wind.” Cupping a hand, he coughed into it.

“And even though I’m feelin’ poorly, I aim to take a stand on behalf o’ this town against the wind what’s comin’.” His gaze swept past the confused physician and wandered to the hallway beyond. “If fer naught else, on behalf o’ a certain lady who done more than her duty by me.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Mr. Malone, I’m sure.” Stanton had his bag open and was hunting among the contents. If he could just load his needle… “For whatever reason. But I say again it is only the wind, and in my professional opinion you are somewhat unsettled in mind. If you will let me, I will…”

Fully dressed now in skin and cotton, leather and wool, Malone was at the doctor’s side in two strides. Stanton was distressed that the mountain man now stood between him and the doorway, but he bore the discomfort manfully.

“Doc, you familiar with the expression ‘The wind is dying’?”

Stanton blinked. “Well, certainly, sir. Even a child knows the phrase. It is a common thing.”

Malone nodded, and the wolf’s-head cap he wore seemed to nod agreement on its own. “What d’you think happens, then, to the wind when it dies?”

The doctor’s reaction indicated that this was a line of thought to which he had not devoted much in the way of prior contemplation. “I must confess that I fail to follow your reasoning, sir.”

“The wind.” Malone’s voice was low and intense. “When it dies. What happens to it?”

Striving to help (from the safety of the hallway), Hearts Doland spoke up. “Why, it simply fades away, sir. One moment there is a breeze, and the next there is none. Nothing remains but a stillness of the aether.”

Malone turned in the gambler’s direction. “Most times, thet is the way of it, yes. Most times, but not all. There are rare occasions, scarce times, when conditions are just right, when it is with the wind the same as it is with people. Times when something remains. Some small fragmentation of former existence. Some semblance of the previous. You’ve probably felt it yourself. That moment when something unseen tips your hat but naught is to be felt. When a woman’s petticoats are bestirred above her ankle sufficient to draw the eye but nothing else is moved. It is no more than a flicker of movement, a whisper of the cosmos, a breath of the Earth. Here and then gone.” He drew himself up, banged his head lightly against the ceiling, and winced.

“But there are times when the spirit of such things, instead of going away, lingers in a kind of limbo that is neither of reality nor of nonexistence, between life and death. ’Tis true of aspects o’ Nature as well as man, and more so of the wind than rock or cloud. Thus trapped twixt the Here and the Not, between the Going and the Coming or the Actual and the Imagined, such spirits become frustrated, angry, and at the final, furious. Settling score with such angry manifestations and pacifying them is the job o’ certain exorcists, diviners, seers, and witchery folk.”

Stanton harrumphed. “Are you claiming, Mr. Malone, sir, to count yourself among such practitioners of the fictional arts in this modern era of science and learning?” He was still trying to extract his needle from the depths of the bag. “I must remind you that it is the nineteenth century, and those of us with a claim to learning have no truck with such superstitious nonsense.”

Malone nodded, sniffled massively, and headed for the doorway, where the owner of the hotel and the gambler with whom he shared less than ethical earnings made haste to remove themselves from his path.

“Then you won’t mind, son of Hygeia, if I attempt to preserve your town from that which you insist cannot exist.”

It was not hard to follow the mountain man at a distance, as the sound of his descending the stairs from the hotel’s second floor to the ground below echoed with the booming of his passage. They would have followed him out onto the street as well, had not the breeze that had been blowing outside all morning risen to such force as to leave them to believe that a tempest of biblical proportions had suddenly and inexplicably descended on the town.

Huddled just inside the hotel’s entrance, the three men had no difficulty peering without, since the rising gale had ripped the door from its hinges. Their curiosity as to the mountain man’s intentions notwithstanding, they were careful to remain within sturdy wooden walls that had begun to rattle and shake. Off to their right, windows brought by wagon from Denver blew out with a musical crackle. Unable to turn away quite in time, Doland winced as a flying shard scored his right cheek. Automatically, Doc Stanton proceeded to treat the resulting trickle of blood, leaving Barker to report on what could be seen outside. The hotel owner’s observations were not encouraging.

“Sounds like a tornado!” He had to shout to make himself heard above the rising gusts. “But I don’t see no funnel cloud!”

Tending to the injured gambler, Stanton yelled without turning from his ministrations. “What do you see, Bales?”

Squinting into the howling, blowing grit that was now streaming down the street parallel to the ground, Barker allowed as how the clanging and banging they were currently hearing was due to the windmill from the Spencer place being blown straight down Main Street. This was soon followed by the Spencer place itself, intact and complete down to front porch and back barn. Leaning out farther and shielding his eyes as best he was able, the hotel owner could see that the street was cleared and vacant. As soon as the storm had struck, anyone with an ounce of common sense had retreated to the shelter of the nearest solid structure. Upper Main Street, the lifeline of the town, was completely deserted.

Looking in the other direction, with the wind now at his back, Barker saw that this was not entirely so.

All other mounts having fled or been driven away, a single horse remained on the street. He recognized it immediately as the one belonging to the mountain man. From the time Malone had rode up on his singular mount, its ancestry had been the subject of some discussion among those who had passed it by. Of dimensions proportionate to its owner, it was theorized to be part Percheron and part Appaloosa, with the rest derivative of an equine bloodline that remained resolutely indeterminate even among those townsfolk who considered themselves a good judge of such matters. There was also considerable discussion of the leather patch that was affixed to its forehead, as this appeared to cover a tumor or protruding bone the true identity of which curious onlookers were unable to discern from casual observation.

“Name’s Worthless,” the mountain man had announced while positioning the animal in front of the hitching rail. “Keep away from him. He can spit hard enough to knock a man down.”

Though where this claim was concerned general dubiousness reigned, no one availed themselves of the opportunity to put it to the test. Now, as a wide-eyed Barker looked on, the horse slowly shifted its stance until it was facing away from the bellowing wind. By exposing only its hindquarters to the shrieking gale, it assured protection for its face and minimized its exposure to the flying dirt and sand. In his time Barker had seen many a horse’s ass, not all of which were running for Congress, and as the walls of his hotel shuddered and trembled around him he had to admit that in the annals of equine butts the one that was presented to him now was of genuinely monumental proportions. It was an epic backside, a truly prodigious rear end—one might even go far as to say Gibraltarian. And it defied the wind that had swept all else before it. All else except the horse and its owner.

Displaying a boldness that bordered on recklessness, Malone had stumbled out into the street. As an astonished Barker beckoned for his companions, one with forehead bandaged and the other clutching his medical bag, to join him, the mountain man turned deliberately to face directly into the wind. It seemed certain that if naught else, the wolf’s-head cap he wore must surely be blown off and carried toward Pikes Peak, but nothing of the sort happened. Perhaps because, though difficult to make out through the blowing dust and grit, it looked as if the drooping legs of the wolfskin had clamped down on the head and neck of their owner in order to hold on tight.

Facing down the tempest, Malone staggered a couple of times, coughed once, wiped his nose with the back of a treelike forearm, and inhaled. Continued to inhale. Sucked in air so that his chest, already barrel-like, expanded until it seemed to double in size. An openmouthed Doc Stanton avowed as how such an expansion was physically impossible. Unaware of the nearby physician’s lightning-quick evaluation of his prodigious lung capacity, Malone proceeded to exhale directly into the teeth of the wind.

The hurricane that was blowing down the center of Main Street halted. It just stopped plum dead, as Doland pointed out. For a moment all was calm, quiet, peaceful as a Sunday morning on a September day. Malone horked up something unspeakable and spat it out, started to turn back to the hotel—and flinched visibly as the wind resumed its assault. It had backed off, yes, but it had not gone away. It had not been defused or defeated. The mountain man’s blow had sent it spinning, but not to eternity. Boreas still infused it, still drove it, still maintained it. It swirled, broke apart, regrouped, and bore down once more on the center of the helpless town.

Again Malone drew in an impossible quantity of air and again he exhaled right into the center of the gale. For a second time there was quiet, and for a second time the wind collated and re-formed itself to blast down the middle of the street. For a third time the indefatigable mountain man began to suck in an impossible breath preparatory to confronting the wind on its own terms. Only this time he managed but a partial volume before he broke down in a spasm of coughing. Giant though he was, he was a sick man, and the minor but still undeniable affliction from which he was suffering conspired to prevent him from mustering the full respiratory resolution of which he would ordinarily have been capable.

Lifting the defiant, coughing hulk off his booted feet, the full force of the enraged wind raised him into the air and blew him backward. Watching from the hotel doorway, a terrified Barker thought he could hear among the screaming gale an inhuman howl not unlike that of triumph.

Flung into the air and backward, Malone was forced to a last desperate tack. Stretching out one massive arm, he managed to catch hold of the reins dangling from his mount’s bridle. As it took up the weight, Worthless’s head snapped forward. Responding to the pull, the horse issued a slight, irritated snort from his nostrils. Otherwise he did not react, neither did he move. All four pillarlike legs seemed as firmly rooted to the earth as the iron footings of Mr. Eiffel’s tower. Clutching the reins with one hand, the massive stretched-out form of Amos Malone whipped up and down above the ground like a flag over Montauk on the Fourth of July.

The frustrated, infuriated tempest tore at him, clawing at his body. But no matter how hard it blew, it could not dislodge his viselike grip on his mount’s reins. Neither could it so much as budge an indifferent Worthless from his casual stance. Bellowing wind continued to flow over and around a sprawling rump that was as solid and immobile as if it had been hewn from a block of Vermont granite.

Climbing horizontally into the wind, Malone pulled himself hand over hand toward his horse until he was once more able to stand on his own beside it. With his right fist gripping the pommel of the saddle, he steadied himself. Grim of mien, he was preparing to inhale and blow into the heart of the storm for yet a fourth time when the most peculiar expression crossed his face. His nose wrinkled up, his cheeks swelled, and his eyes began to water. His lower jaw dropped, rose, dropped again. As recognition dawned on the watching Barker, the hotel owner’s own expression contorted. Throwing himself away from the now-doorless entrance, he scrambled crablike on hands and knees in the direction of the heavy walnut counter.

“Move!” he screeched above the roar of the wind and the dangerously loud rattle of barely standing walls. “If you value your life and future, take cover, take cover!”

An unquestioning Doc Stanton hurried to follow, not forgetting to bring along his precious medical bag as he scurried across the floor in the hotel owner’s wake. Only a frowning Hearts Doland remained at the doorway, neither seeing nor understanding any rationale sufficient to inspire such panic and haste among his companions.

“Why?” he shouted at the rapidly retreating Barker. “What’s changed that necessitates…?”

He never finished his query. Or perhaps he did. It was impossible to tell, because his words and every other sound in the world were drowned out by the concussive force of Amos Malone’s sneeze.

The mountain man’s mind-boggling chuff erupted directly into the face of the onrushing wind and tore it to pieces. Stunned zephyrs whipped back and forth, too damaged to reconvene. Traumatized drafts wafted to and fro, seeking shelter of their own in crevices and alleyways until they too could dissipate privately into nothingness. Shattered, shaken, and shafted, the ghosts of winds past that had arrived in search of satisfaction and destruction vanished, elementally and totally banished to the realm of the Aeolian memories that had given them birth.

When he could hear again, when he could think again, a trembling Bales Barker rose to his feet from where he had taken shelter behind the hotel counter. Slightly steadier on his feet, a shaken Doc Stanton rose beside him. Together the two men stumbled slowly to the entrance of the building and peered tentatively outside.

Every window in every building in town was gone, blown in. Rolled up like balls of string, the carefully laid wooden slat sidewalks had all piled up like so many giant tumbleweeds in front of Mordecai Smith’s Stable and Smithy at the far end of town. All the hitching posts were gone, as were the watering troughs. But the rest of the town appeared to have survived more or less intact.

Of Hearts Doland there was no sign. Having failed at the last to heed the hotel owner’s warning, he had played a final gamble and lost.

Staggering outside, Barker was at once astonished and relieved to see that save for the loss of every window and a considerable quantity of decorative architectural bric-a-brac, the bulk of his establishment remained intact. All up and down the street, shaken citizens were emerging in ones and twos to take stock of their own establishments. In keeping with the general inexplicableness of the shocking occurrence, the church steeple was intact but the heavy iron bell that had come all the way from New England was missing, borne away as lightly as a leaf on an intruding breeze.

It was not many minutes thereafter that the two men encountered a face they did not recognize. This surprised them, as while sizable for one of its type, the population of the town was not so vast as to preclude knowledge of all its citizenry by each and every responsible inhabitant.

“That were something, weren’t it?” Barker inquired conversationally of the unknown gentleman. “Never seen a wind like that. Never hope to again.”

From the back of his horse, the man frowned. “What wind?”

The hotel owner and the doctor exchanged a look. “What do you mean, ‘what wind?’ sir? Can it be possible that someone was too soundly abed to have not been rudely jostled awake by the recent local apocalypse?”

The rider made a face. “Damned if I know what you two are on about. Are you daft? Been peaceable calm hereabouts nigh on a week now.”

Stanton stepped forward. “Sir, I account myself a physician of some competence. Enough to know when I am awake and when I am drowsing in the grip of a dream. Setting even that knowledge aside, I and my friend can declare with the same certainty as should you that at this time of year this part of Colorado is never ‘peaceable calm.’”

The other man drew back. “Now I know you two are daft.” He looked around, squinting. “Or maybe you’re right and I am too. Been through this part of Nebraska a dozen times before and never come upon this community. Don’t know how I could’ve missed it.”

With that he chucked the reins he was holding and, patently unsettled, continued on down the street. Barker and Stanton looked at each other. Of one mind, they commenced to search for a certain exceptionally large recent resident of the hotel owner’s establishment in the hopes that worthy might could shed some light, or perhaps fresh air, on the unexpected conundrum with which they had suddenly been presented. Regrettably, they never again encountered him or his mount.

Both giant horse and giant rider were gone. Gone with the ghost wind.