Gunsmoke Blues Read online

  Gunsmoke Blues

  BALOGUN OJETADE

  Copyright © 2018 Balogun Ojetade

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1722386126

  ISBN-13: 978-1722386122

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate this book to everyone who has ever needed a hero.

  THE REAL ROBERT CHARLES

  In 1900 a black laborer named Robert Charles set off a massive manhunt after an altercation with several New Orleans police officers. Before all was done, Charles would shoot 27 whites – including seven policemen – sent to apprehend him, killing several. The violence that surrounded him continued to swirl and claim others even after his death during his last stand in a burning building.

  Previously unknown, the last turbulent days of Charles’ life would make him a monster to whites and a folk hero to Blacks. For blues artists he became one of the legendary “bad men” – a near-mythic Black man of superhuman capabilities whose defiance of white authority and the Jim Crow system was frightening, dangerous and captivating all at once. He even had a ballad written in his honor by the famed jazz musician and composer, Jelly Roll Morton.

  Not a great deal is known of Charles. Ida B. Wells, in her pamphlet Mob Rule in New Orleans, portrayed Robert Charles as “the hero of New Orleans” for his singular act of self-defense. At a Boston gathering on anti-lynching, a black attendee allegedly asserted, “If one Negro can hold 20,000 at bay what can 10,000 Negroes do?”

  In Michigan a black boxer walked into a police station and attempted to murder a police chief in solidarity with Charles. In New Orleans a black train rider, Melby Dotson, awakened suddenly from fitful dreams of Charles’ death, drew a pistol and shot the white conductor; Dotson was subsequently lynched by a white mob. A black sympathizer of Charles walked up and shot Fred Clark – the black informant who helped the police track Charles down – in the head, killing him instantly.

  With Gunsmoke Blues, the author adds to the legend of Robert Charles and wraps his story in an exciting and thrilling novel in the Steamfunk genre.

  Set in the same world as the first Steamfunk novel ever written – the bestselling Moses: The Chronicles of Harriet Tubman – Gunsmoke Blues promises to deliver the same fast paced, wild ride that Moses: The Chronicles of Harriet Tubman does.

  Read on and enjoy!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank all the writers, artists and fans who continue to make Steamfunk one of the coolest, most innovative and most relevant genres and aesthetics in the universe. Steamfunkateers, stand UP!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Provident Hospital, Chicago; Winter,1898.

  Dr. Daniel Hale Williams poured himself another shot of whiskey and tried to ignore the scraping of the rats in the trash can outside under the window of his office. He wondered how many glasses he’d need to drink to block out the noise completely.

  “Six so far,” he muttered to the shadows in the room, which danced in step with the flickering of the flame in the lantern on his desk. “Nowhere near enough.” He knocked back the crystal glass of golden-brown liquid and poured another.

  A sharp hiss came from somewhere outside. It sounded close, but the winter wind blew so violently in Chicago in February, he couldn’t be certain. The heavy snow played tricks with sounds too, muffling some while seeming to amplify others. A man couldn’t trust his own senses in this place. Not human senses, at any rate.

  What was he doing at the hospital of his founding during such an intense blizzard in the middle of winter anyway? He was supposed to leave work to his subordinates until the spring. He was, after all, the great Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who in 1893 performed the first documented, successful pericardium surgery in the United States to repair a wound. His hospital was the first non-segregated hospital in the United States, and he had also founded an associated nursing school for Black men and women.

  He had come there chasing rats. Now they chased him. There was a certain justice to that, he supposed. Rats had always ruled the cities. Humans had driven them out. But in Chicago, nothing much had changed since the great Black adventurer and businessman, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable founded the city. Rats went about their business as they always had. It wasn’t just ordinary rats he feared now, though.

  If only it was just ordinary rats, he thought.

  The wind gusted again outside the cabin, which doubled for his office and his living quarters when he was on campus. The ambience of lantern flame and moonlight soothed his nerves and quenched the worst of his fears. Or perhaps that was just the alcohol.

  He drank the eighth glass of whiskey more slowly than the seventh. If it was going to be his last, he might as well try to enjoy it.

  “A twenty-year-old single malt doesn’t come cheap,” he reminded himself.

  His students had saved and bought it for him two years earlier, on his fortieth birthday. No need to waste a good malt.

  “Doctor Daniel,” as his students had affectionately called him, had been Surgeon-In-Chief at Freedman’s Hospital once. He still would have been, if his paper hadn’t been leaked to journalists. He’d sent it in confidence to the International Journal on Infectious Diseases, published by the International Federation on Infectious Diseases (IFID). It was the most important scientific journal in the world, and the content of his paper would have rocked the field of epidemiology. But some fool had given it to the popular press. He had a pretty good idea who’d done it. The academic world was small, full of petty rivalries and bitterness and hatred for a Black man who was smarter than all his white peers.

  Now they called him Nigger Piper—because, of course, pied meant “multi-colored”—or worse. Nigger Piper predicts Were-rat Outbreak, the headlines read. Nigger Piper’s Evil Nigger Experiments. And those weren’t the most absurd headlines.

  The whiskey was starting to do its job.

  What stung him most was the way his Black colleagues had treated him. They should have defended him from ridicule. They should have recognized the significance of his discoveries. But they were just as bad as the newspaper journalists. Oh, they dressed it up in academic language so they could claim the moral high ground, but most of what they wrote was just as vindictive as the white doctors.

  “Completely unsubstantiated speculations,” they said. “Groundless scaremongering,” they claimed, and, “Preposterous and dangerous theories and poorly-designed experimental protocols.”

  He knew what they really meant: “This doesn’t fit our preconceived models. The white man will say we’re all crazy, now. Conventional theories cannot account for your rogue ideas. You’re an embarrassment, to the race, Doctor.”

  In a way, he hoped he was insane. He had uncovered something so horrifying that he had questioned that sanity many times. He had double-checked his calculations, repeated his experiments under different control conditions. His conclusions were robust. The journal editors should have seen that. He had handed over every last piece of data and all his notes from the past two years. Tintypes even. All the evidence, documented, analyzed and repeated. But once the story had leaked to the newspapers, they had rushed to denounce him and dismiss his results.

  “One day it will all come back to bite them,” Dr. Williams chuckled. That was a good joke. It was a pity he had no one to tell it to.

  Unless…

  No, he mustn’t even think about that.

  He sipped the whiskey and tried not to think any more about biting rats and rat bites. How much of the bottle would he need to drink so that when they came for him he would no longer care? He intended to find out. There was no point saving the whiskey for another night. This would be his last.

  A faint rapping came from inside the cabin. Not outside, this time. Not the scratching of a rat, or the scratch
ing of long oak branches against the cabin’s exterior wall. A muffled rhythmic drumming was coming from inside—metal against wood. He knew what it was and where it came from. He glanced quickly at the bedroom door, then looked away. The door was firmly locked. He patted his shirt pocket to check. Yes, the key was still there. He had locked the door himself.

  “Don’t open it, Daniel,” he told himself, shaking his head. “Don’t even think about it.”

  He picked up the bottle to pour again then thought better of it. Easier just to drink straight from the bottle. He preferred his whiskey straight anyway. He stood up, somewhat unsteadily, and walked the short distance to the window of the log cabin. White. All was white out there—the snow, thick on the ground; the icicles hanging from the trees; above everything, the moon. It was a beautiful night. White… and black, too, of course—black of night; black of shadow; a Black man, awaiting the black unknown.

  “White people made everything black scary, mysterious,” he said, his words slurred. “I guess we are scary and mysterious to them. What else could survive hundreds of years of brutality and bondage, let alone excel despite it? Goddamn bastards!”

  The beauty of a Chicago winter hadn’t struck him quite so forcefully before. It was a fierce beauty, untamed nature in its purest form. If only that nature hadn’t put on a suit and taken up residence in the cities of America.

  The snow was deepening. Perhaps it would fall all night and bury the cabin. Maybe he would survive then, hidden beneath a layer of white.

  “It’d be the only time anything white has saved me,” he chuckled.

  He would emerge in the morning and the nightmare would have passed. But that was crazy thinking. There could never be that much snow, not even in a Chicago blizzard. And there was no time now. They were close, not more than a mile away, he guessed.

  The tapping sound started up again from inside the other room, louder this time. “Dammit!” It was impossible to ignore. He turned away from the winter wonderland outside and paced the wooden floor of the cabin—his world now; outside no longer mattered.

  He wondered again at the events that had conspired to bring him to that godforsaken cabin for his last night on earth. He could discern no rational reason for it. He had done nothing to deserve his fate. No good would come of it. His discoveries had been pushed aside and ignored. One day they might be unearthed by some researcher somewhere, but by then it would be too late. His thoughts were turning maudlin again. He could blame the whiskey… or the clarity of knowing he had less than an hour to live.

  He paused at the locked door and listened carefully. No knocking now. He reached for the handle and pulled it slowly. It turned just so far and then stopped. Locked. He felt for the key in his pocket again. What if…?

  No, that was dangerous thinking. And yet… what difference did it make now? The two outside were coming for him, and they were fully turned. The final stage of the condition. No longer a shred of humanity left. The woman was still human, though. Just… different.

  Mary Church Terrell. She had been a promising student, albeit older than most—just seven years his junior. The other two had shown great promise, too. But Mary had always been the best. She was a smart woman—straight A grades, despite taking care of a husband and making a home; a promising academic or clinical career ahead of her. He’d been delighted when she agreed to assist him in a three-year project, isolated from other people. It was a lot to ask from a married woman with so much potential, yet she’d had faith in him. All three of them had. They’d followed him, relocating to Chicago, and he had let them down. He deserved what was coming to him… coming for him.

  A rat screeched again outside, quickly followed by a second. They were very close now. As if in reply, the knocking started up again, louder and more violent.

  Dr. Williams tipped the bottle and swallowed a big mouthful of whiskey, slopping half of it down his front. He’d lost count of how much he’d drunk. What the hell, he would open the door. He drew the key from his shirt pocket and inserted it into the lock. Slowly he turned it, until the lock clicked softly. He tried the handle again. This time it turned all the way. He pushed the door open a few inches and peered inside.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Moonlight from the window threw a stark strip of white into the darkened room beyond. Careful now. He mustn’t let the moonlight reach her. If it did, everything would be over. Moonlight was the catalyst for the final stage, which Dr. Williams called the Third Degree.

  The bedroom was even smaller than the main room and the office of the cabin, and sparsely furnished. It was incredible that they’d all lived together for so long in such primitive conditions—a combined kitchen and living space, four tiny bedrooms and a basic bathroom. Thankfully, Chicago was one of two cities—Brooklyn was the other—with a sewer system, thus indoor bathrooms. It was rumored, though, that the famed inventor, Baas Bello, had built an indoor bathroom in Harriet Tubman’s home in Auburn New York. If this was true, then the rumors about Baas and Harriet being lovers was most likely also true.

  Mary Church’s room had few items of furniture, but still felt cramped—a wardrobe against one wooden wall, a locker just visible opposite. He pushed the door to the room open a little more. The moonbeam crept further across the floor, reaching almost to the bedside locker. He mustn’t open it any more.

  He grabbed the lantern from the kitchen table and held it before him as he slid through the half-open door. The lantern flashed monstrous shadows on the back wall as it swayed in his hand. Once inside he put it on top of the locker, keeping the bottle of whiskey in his other hand. He was going to need that.

  Mary lay on the bed where he had secured her, arms and legs tied tightly to the metal bed-frame with thick ropes. Congealed blood covered her wrists and ankles where she had struggled with the knots. The bed sheets beneath her were stained red and brown. He felt a pang of guilt, but quickly fought it away. Those knots were all that had kept him alive.

  The stench from the room made him want to gag. She had been lying in her own filth for days now, strapped to the bed. He hadn’t been to see her since the Second Degree had taken hold. There had been no point after that. She had stopped accepting food and water, so what could he have done for her in any case? No cure existed. Nothing could slow the onset of the next degree. And she had been unconscious for much of the time.

  Dr. Williams pulled up a wooden chair and sat next to the bed. The chair rocked slightly from leg to leg on the uneven floorboards as he tipped back the whiskey bottle, swallowing another mouthful.

  Mary hardly seemed to be aware of him at first. Her eyes remained closed, almost as if she was sleeping, but then she arched her back and thrashed at the ropes that bound her, making the bed frame rattle and thud against the back wall of the cabin again. She was still fully human to look at, but her face was horribly gaunt and pale, her cheeks like hollows, the skin stretched taut across her forehead. You could see the skull outlined beneath the translucent flesh. It was hardly surprising she looked so thin and pinched, given that she had refused all fluids for over a week now. A normal human would be dead already.

  That was how he knew she had entered the Second Degree of the condition. The refusal to eat or drink. The disgust she showed when offered food. The acute sensitivity to sunshine or aetheric light. Symptoms he had meticulously catalogued and sent to the journal, only to be met with ridicule and disbelief.

  Her fingernails had become unnaturally long, and he could see that the shape of her jaw had changed to accommodate the extended teeth. Her nose had changed shape too, becoming more animal-like as her rat senses developed. And her chestnut-brown hair, always beautiful, had grown even longer and thicker than before. It shined lustrously in the orange flicker of the lantern. She was ready to make the transition to the Third Degree.

  Her eyes snapped open as he looked at her. The irises, once dark brown, were now bright yellow.

  It startled him to see that. It was the most inhuman aspect of the transformation.
Her eyes had been calm, kind. Now they burned like the fires of hell.

  She struggled when she noticed him, thrashing from side to side, trying to break free of the ropes that bit into her flesh.

  “Calm down, Mary,” he said soothingly. “You’re just hurting yourself.” He reached out a hand to touch her, but she hissed at him. He was thankful for the ball of cloth he had stuffed in her mouth to gag her. She shook her head violently from side to side in frustration, trying to shake the gag free, but he had tied it too firmly.

  “Mary Church Terrell,” he tried again. “You know I had to bind you. It was for your own good.”

  There was truth in that. She would have battered herself to death when the fever took her. Before the calm set in, she had been like a rabid dog, thrashing her limbs, hurling herself to the ground as the disease spread through her body, squeezing the last vestige of humanity out of her very bones. It had been horrible to watch, and just as bad to listen to. The gag had been for his benefit, there was no point denying that; least of all now.

  She stopped shaking her head and lay still, seemingly exhausted. Then she fixed him with those yellow eyes and started to make a new sound. It sounded like speech, but he couldn’t be sure.

  He bent his head closer to her face. “Mary? Are you trying to say something?”

  She gave him a quick nod of her head, then fell silent again, beseeching him with her wide eyes.

  Dr. Williams took another swig of whiskey. He might as well remove the gag. What harm could it do now? The worst of the animal noises had ceased at least a day ago. Since then she had stayed mostly silent. And now perhaps she wanted to talk. Why not? He had little to fear from her now. The two outside were the true threat.

  “Mary?” He spoke quietly to her, pronouncing the words carefully so that the rat brain would understand. “I’m going to remove the gag, but you have to promise not to scream or hiss. Do you understand?”