Peckerhead, a Short Story

 

 Gordon Peckerhead Wass a ruffian of the first order.  He preferred be called Slide or Mr. Slide and he's already killed three men for calling him by his last name.  His father before him had killed two and his mother one.  Calling the family fierce was like calling a Tasmanian devil irritable.

With both his parents gone to the great beyond, Mr. Slide ran the Manahoy gang in the town of Liquid Springs, not to be confused with the nearby town of Dry Gulch.

 

Dry Gulch was called by it’s native American moniker, Rushing Waters, until Slide and his gang took over the area’s water supply and community swimming pool.  Before the swimming pool had been free, but now anyone who wanted to swim paid Slide and his boys a nickel to get in and another nickel to get out, plus interest of a penny an hour.

 

Jack Spanker, Mr. Slide’s number two, also called Number Two by the townspeople, had a rough time with math and was easily confused. Youngsters often swam for an hour and exited for a penny instead of 6 cents.

 

The other members of the gang sharpened their skills by going into the desert to shoot slingshots at cougars and make a run for it.  Two members hadn’t run quite fast enough.  Cougars never tired of the game.

 

Sheriff Duewa Diddy, had only killed one man for calling him by his last name.  But, it had been a fair fight. The sheriff took the guy’s gun and gave him a running start.

 

Right now, Sheriff Diddy had a giant problem.  The town folk in Liquid Springs were starting to complain about the rising cost of hay, now that Gordon Peckerhead had cornered the hay market and burned the fields of those who complained.

 

The problem could be easily solved by buying hay from Dry Gulch, except the Dry Gulch fields had all withered and died.

 

Sammy Hoof had come up with another solution, breeding cows that ate only a quarter of the hay a normal cow ate. Sadly, they were skinny, very skinny, and only stood two feet tall.  Milk was still labeled a gallon, but only contained a cup, and a twelve-ounce steak could fit in palm of your hand.  

 

Sheriff Diddy had a solution.  The city council recertified measurements.  A cup was now officially a gallon, and six ounces of steak became twelve ounces.  A large bail of hay would now fit in a lunch pail, while ranchers were prohibited from breeding anything but short, skinny cows.

 

Even with the new measurements, it was more than the suffering citizens of Dry Gulch had.  They started moving to Liquid Springs.  Land prices in Liquid Springs shot up like English arrows at the Battle of Crécy.   Nobody was terribly happy.  Mental illness was a pandemic.

 

The city council altered the times of the day. Daylight was declared to be from two in the morning to midnight and official night shrunk to two hours.  They called it moonlight saving time. Liquor stores within a hundred mile radius gave their employees cash bonuses and threw street parties in major cities.

 

Merchants opened their doors at four in the morning, but couldn’t hire enough employees. Worst yet, customers didn’t show up. Revenue dropped into the bottom of a deep well.

 

The city council of Liquid Springs voted to raise taxes to pay for newly arrived citizens of Dry Gulch to have affordable housing.  One council member lost the will to live after being marinated in a pond.  Another quickly changed his vote, in the middle of the street with a gun to his head.

 

It was time for the citizens of the two towns to combine forces and take action.

The action came the by name of The Silver Kid, whose father had been a gunfighter, The Lead Kid.  His grandfather was The Happy Kid, the founder of Liquid Springs, which at the time was called Damp Springs.

 

The day The Silver Kid kicked the door of the saloon and strode in was the day the citizens of both towns realized they’d made the right choice.

 

The first thing The Kid noticed was cowboys going in the ladies room. He pulled out his polished steel Bowie knife and told the cowboys, all two of them, one of whom was the Sheriff, to stop bothering the ladies, or stand by to become steers, with all the rights and privileges to squat instead of squirt.

 

He didn’t have to use his knife to make some conversions, and to get the sheriff to take off his badge, toss it to The Kid and make a hasty retreat, the saloon doors swinging.

 

Next, The Kid turned and called out Peckerhead, who was sitting at a poker table with a large stack of chips in front of him.

 

“Men have died, calling me by my last name!”  Peckerhead got up and reached for his long barreled forty four.  Chips scattered.

 

“And men have died interrupting me,” The Kid said, pulling out both silver pistols and dotting the i on Peckerhead’s liver, crossing the t of his throat and turning the h for head into an H.

 

The silver pistols sparkled as they spun and were holstered in a flash.

 

Mr. Slide slid.  

 

Within the hour, gang members fled the city, and those who stayed repented of their sins at the Sin No More Church of Holy Smoke. The collection plates soon had to be carried by weightlifters and the pastor bought his wife new shoes. 

 

The two towns shared a cemetery, Chelsea Boot Meadows, featuring a state of the art Jenn-Air crematorium and bakery.  Trouble was, nobody could afford to be buried there.  And nobody wanted to buy the bread. The Silver Kid paid for one body to be camped for eternity.  Citizens put weights on the drowned council member and left him to sink in the pond.

 

Moonlight Savings Time, however stayed on the books.  Nobody knew why and nobody wanted it.

 

The towns merged and became Liquid Gulch.

Many years later, a statue of Peckerhead stood in the town square and his time became known as a time of great prosperity.  Beside him stood a statue of a very small cow and a tiny set of scales.  Under the statue the plaque read, Mr. Gordon. Slice, Prosperity For the People. A true gentleman of the old west.

 

In that same future decade, The Silver Kid was vilified by the town council as a killer and his statue was taken down in the dead of what was left of the night.

 

A nearby town of Dusty Fields lost their water rights and soon citizens of the town began to emigrate…

PINTREST DID NOT PERMIT ME TO ADVERTISE THIS STORY AS WRITTEN.  NO SPECIFICS GIVEN, BUT I TOOK A GUESS AND HAVE CHANGED THAT PART OF THE BARROOM SCENE.