fellaheen - the darkness: a fragment

when belle starr played the piano in cabin creek the fellaheen couldn't stop crying for almost a week the piano stood in the middle of the barroom floor decorated with only a skull and an apple core the wanderers lined the walls upstairs and down and spilled out into the dusty streets of town they leaned on the banisters and stairwells with careless ease and sat on the floors beneath the chandeliers the sahibs lined the bar looking grim and strange smooth gamblers, and leathery men who rode the range miners and rustlers and dreamers in search of gold and wandering strangers whose tales will never be told frank james stood behind the bar in his best white shirt no glass or bottle behind him had a speck of dirt the mahogany under his elbow shone cold and black his pale blue eyes rolled the room both front and back jesse sat alone in a corner of the room riffling a deck of cards with an air of gloom fat men and thin kept away from his reverie but he was not what they had come to see belle tipped her feathered head as she struck the keys her red dress shimmered from her shoulders to her knees the air was filled with a rainbow of bumblebees that turned to drops of ice in a mountain breeze quantrill leaned over the rail by the upstairs rooms silent behind him like the apostles plundered tombs his red eye drifted down in the shadows to belle his blue eye was fixed forever in the depths of hell beyond quantrill, in a corner of the landing a boy in black with white buck teeth was standing his eyes were cast straight down like coffin lids who else could it be but billy bonney - the kid? but nobody looked at billy, or quantrill all eyes were on belle - they couldn't get their fill all were as quiet as if their own selves had died outside in the desert a lone coyote cried one note, two notes, three notes rippled and broke the fourth note rang like a rifle through the smoke an arrow shot through the darkness and suddenly fell in a waterfall racing the rocks between heaven and hell over the waterfall diving into the moon an almost silent half-remembered tune frank at the bar lights up a tailor made and jesse cuts the deck to the four of spades quantrill is last to remove his granite gaze the kid is a statue - and on and on she plays when belle starr played the cabin in cabin creek gunmen turned into clouds and could not speak nothing lasts forever in the western night birds walk across the desert and the stars...