The Lone Street Shootout and Other Cliches

The marshal limped out of his office and stare off across the sun-bleached plains. When folk across the way noticed the hardware at his hip, they bolted, because everyone had heard who was expected on the train today, at high noon. The marshal's eyes squinted in the bright sunlight and the crow's feet sank deep way from his steely blue eyes. From far-off the train whistle sounded, and the iron horse was right on schedule.

Hugo, the European blacksmith, hurriedly battened down the wooden shutters on his smithy and closed and locked the door with the closed sign prominent. Up and down the street the other townsfolk followed suit and door and windows slammed loudly.

The marshal limped out into the middle of the street. He wore only the horse pistol at his hip and had not considered bringing the rifle, or the shotgun, because there were ten of them coming, and although he would make his stand, here in the street, he knew extra hardware would not extend his stay here on this earth.

"Pa! Pa, I'm here," Little Timmy cried, coming up the street hurriedly, barely managing to cradle the massive double-barreled shotgun that had been his grandfather's and had not been fired in more than twenty years.

"Go home, Little Timmy," the marshal said, sternly.

"I'm going to help you, Pa, I can shoot, I been practicing with my rifle, and I got extra shells," Little Timmy said, slowing as he neared the stern, slim old man out in the middle of the street.

"Go home, Little Timmy," the marshal repeated, "and it's best if you don't be calling me your father, not any more."

It made his heart heavy to talk to the boy like that, but Miss Tammy had ended their marriage when she learned that the marshal meant to stand in the street against her own brother, because blood was thicker than marriage, or the law. But Little Timmy meant to stand with his stepfather, regardless of his outlaw uncle approaching even now on that train.

The boy was about to protest, but then he noticed the two strange men sitting in front of the Boot Hill Saloon, two smiling men in strange clothes; two strange men smiling with some kind of mechanical contraptions in their hands.

"Pa, look at them, who in the heck are they?" Little Timmy said, quietly, staring at the strange men.

The marshal was about to snap at the boy for the mild profanity, but then he noticed the two strange men as well. The strangers were decked out in some new-fangled spectacles and they grinned as they held little rectangles up before their faces. The two strange men were giggling, strangely.

"What are you strangers doing here? You obviously don't belong," the marshal said, low and dangerous, his right hand hovering now just above the horse pistol at his leg. "You are going to have to clear out, and long before high noon."

One of the strange men giggled again and looked over his small rectangle at the marshal.

"Don't mind us," he said, "we're just here recording this, you won't even remember us being here after the gunfight."

"Yeah, we can't interfere in any way, so don't worry about us, this is just for class," the other strange man said. "We got permission to port in here from MIT."

"Yeah," the first strange man said, in his strange accent. "We're going to be measuring velocity and stuff, and find out how some of the ricochets played into the outcome of this famous gunfight."

"Me," the second strange man said, giggling, "I just love western movies, and this is my first chance to see the real thing! I can't wait to see the Lone Street Shootout, I've heard about it since I was a little boy, and there was a neat Hopalong Cassidy show a long time ago that made it all look really neat, but you don't look much like Hopalong. You look more like Gary Cooper."

"High Noon," the first strange man said. Then, to the angry, disbelieving marshal he explained: "We got these new top of the line Smart Paddle Cameras, so everything will be completely measurable, you don't have to worry about accuracy. Just remember this is for posterity, so look brave, and don't have any kind of embarrassing loss of bowels or anything, okay?"

The marshal stood with his mouth opening and closing, but no sounds emerging. The crow's feet were deep at his eyes and a certain cold menace was now emanating toward the two strange men. They lost their smiles and lowered their cameras.

Then two even stranger people came out of the Boot Hill Saloon, a heavy man with some kind of close underwear shirt and outlandish shorts that ended at his knees. He appeared to be wearing sandals. Worse, he was smoking a pipe and looking closely at the two strange men, and at the marshal and the boy in the street.

The other person was an older, severe-looking woman with a notepad in her hands.

"I think you need to change the angle of all this, I mean, it is all kind of clich©, don't you think?" the severe woman said, shaking her head, glowering at the two strange men who were now staring back at her, and they looked shaken.

"What, you think time travel to the old west is a clich©?" the pipe-smoking man said, scratching at his large belly, waving what looked to be a metallic cylinder in his hand, a metal device that sloshed some form of liquid that foamed when it slapped the strange men's strange shoes. "This is new stuff! This is my latest idea! I just thought it all up! I just came out of the worst period of writer's block I've ever had, and you know I don't have writer's block, not ever."

"I think you should stick with the western theme, and lose the two time-traveling weirdos from the future," the severe looking woman said, shaking her head negatively. Two lines bracketed her severe mouth, making her appear puppetlike and brittle.

"What are you saying?" one of the strange men blurted, not giggling, interrupting their argument about westerns and time travel. "We are not characters. We are merely visiting a historical occurrence, fully intending to document the event with measurable data.

The large man in the short pants rubbed his face. "I hate it when they talk back like this. I'm telling you they all think they're real, and the funny thing is that they'd think something like a Lone Street Gunfight could be real history, the numbskulls."

"That's The Lone Street Shootout," said the man who loved western movies.

"Whatever," the big man said, taking a swig out of his metallic cylinder. "But I'm the author. And I wrote this piece, and I don't care what any of you think. You're all of you unbelievers," he said, spitting in the dirt, and then he glared at the silent marshal and Little Timmy, "and you two, too, I don't want to hear anything from you two, too."

"Did he just say tutu?" the first strange man giggled.

"Twice," the second strange man replied, holding up his rectangle to record everything for posterity.

"See what I have to work with?" the author said, belching, grimly shaking his big, authoritative head.

Then, suddenly, everyone froze.

"You still playing with that thing?" the father said, getting ready to go outside.

"Yeah, it's pretty cool," the boy said, shaking the crystal ball. All the little pieces inside flew apart and when he peered in, now it was the two men working on a play, and the author in the shorts was on the stage, arguing with his editor, and on the small black-and-white television set there was an old western playing, where a slim old man with steely eyes faced down ten dastardly outlaws, and a young boy crept closer with a shotgun.

"Well, you got anything for me, before I go out into the big ole world?" the father queried.

The boy turned the crystal ball over and looked at the little triangular window, and he read out loud: "It says Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life."

"Wow," the father said, chuckling, "that is an old cliche. You sure you're learning with that thing? I don't want you to get in the habit of rehashing everyone else's garbage. Remember, the whole point is to see how trite a mechanical contrivance is, churning out all the old stuff over and over again. You getting that point?"

"Yes sir, I know," the boy replied dutifully.

The man fastened the shiny molecular disruptor at his hip, just like an old-time gunfighter, and in his boots and big hat his father really did look like an up-to-date cowboy.

At the door, just before he went to the hovercraft tied to the hitching post, the boy called out to him.

"Do you ever wonder?" the boy said.

"Wonder what?" his father said.

"If maybe we're in a story too, you know, one that has been written out for us, and we're just doing our parts?" the boy said, staring at his crystal ball, shaking it to set up a new configuration of all the standard characters and plotlines.

"We all think about that, except no writer could handle anything this complicated, don't you think?" his father said, smiling.

"Guess so," the boy said as the marshal in the crystal ball carried Little Timmy from the bloody street and Miss Tammy ran out to meet them, the little derringer pistol flashing in her hand.

"I'll be in late, I think," his father said, "so you don't wait up. I have to collect the thought convicts at the train. But I'll see you in the morning, okay?"

"Night," the father said.

"Night," the boy said. As the door closed he looked at the big molecular disruptor, and old weapon that used to belong to the boy's grandfather, and had not been fired in probably twenty years.

The boy shook the crystal ball again, hoping for a different outcome this time.

Douglas Christian Larsen Fiction on Yahoo Associated Content:

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