Skull Moon

Claussen, tears streaming from his swollen eyes, shook his head and Lauters slapped him across the face. Then he did it again, laughed, and backhanded the man. Red, hurting handprints were imbedded in the reverend's face. Blood and drool coursed from his mouth.

Lauters pulled him to his feet, patting him on the shoulder. "You would have turned the whole town against me in time." He slammed Claussen against the wall and held him there with one meaty fist. "I've fought worse enemies than you, Reverend. I've beaten and killed the meanest, ugliest men this vile country has thrown against me. Did you think you had a chance?" He slapped him in the face. "Answer me!"

"I never…I didn't…"

Lauters kneed him in the groin and then in the stomach. Claussen doubled over, going to his knees, gasping and wheezing, and Lauters struck him in the face with a series of upper cuts and tossed his bleeding, broken body out into the center of the floor.

The reverend lifted his head up. His face was an atrocity. His left eye was swollen shut and puffed red. His nose was smashed at an angle towards his cheek. His lower lip was bulging and gashed. Blood was smeared over his chin and cheeks. His remaining good eye studied the sheriff with a raw hatred.

Lauters kicked him in the face.

With a drunken, psychotic rage, he pulled the reverend to his feet and hammered him in the face with his right fist while holding him up with his left. He kneed him in the stomach again and watched him fall, pounding the back of his head unmercifully with a savage series of blows from both fists.

Claussen dropped to the floor and didn't move.

Lauters, panting with exertion, alcohol sweating out of his bloated face in rivers, rubbed his cut, bleeding fists. "This isn't over yet, Reverend." He took a china pitcher from its stand and filled a basin with water and dumped it on the still, broken heap of the minister.

Claussen came to, his good eye focusing and unfocusing, his head swimming with dizziness. Lauters picked him up and dropped him on the bed.

"I want you out of this town, Reverend. If you're still here day after tomorrow, I'll kill you. Is that clear?"

Claussen attempted a nod.

Lauters patted him on the chest and put his badge back on, then his coat. He stood in the doorway and smiled. "School's out."

27

Wynona was doing what she did best.

After she had stitched up the gaping wounds in Dewey Mayhew's hide (just so nothing would spill out, mind you), she dressed the man in an old suit provided by his widow. It was no easy task. Mayhew had curled up in a semi-fetal position as he lay dying behind the smithy's shop. Rigor mortis and a nasty wind out of the north had done their best to freeze up his ligaments and muscles permanently in that position. They'd straightened him out some when Doc Perry had done his little autopsy…but not enough.

It was Wynona's job to force things into their proper places. Otherwise, Mayhew wouldn't fit in the box. Dressing the cadaver was one thing, but making him lie flat was quite another.

"Come on, Dewey," Wynona grunted, "work with me, old man."

Wynona was up on the slab with him.

She'd gotten his legs straightened and one arm flat, but the other was no easy task. Every time she pressed his shoulder down that arm swung up from internal stress and slapped her. Wynona was kneeling on Mayhew's bicep and bearing down on his wrist with everything she had. Handling the dead had made her strong. She could toss around 200 pound cadavers like a farm woman handling feed sacks.

But sometimes, the dead were not cooperative.

Dewey was every bit as stubborn in death as he had been in life.

"Come on, you sonofabitch," Wynona groaned. "No need for this now…just help…me out here…uhh…" Wynona gasped for breath. She'd moved the arm enough to fit it in the box, but she wanted to lay it over the breast with the other. It was the traditional position. "You're going in that coffin whether you like it or not…so, please, cooperate…"

Wynona mopped her brow, pushed aside clumps of hair that hung in her face, took a deep breath, and waded back into battle. With a gruesome snap, she got Mayhew's other arm into position. "There," she panted, "that wasn't so bad, now was it?"

"What in the name of the Devil are you doing?"

Wynona, not accustomed to anyone speaking in the preparation room, nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned and saw Mike Ryan standing in the doorway.

"Oh, Mr. Ryan… " Wynona giggled. "You scared the death out of me."

"What in blazes are you doing, woman?"

She smiled, straddling the corpse, very much aware of how it looked. How indecent it might have seemed. "Why, Mr. Ryan…what do you think I was doing?"

"Well, it's just that…"

Wynona giggled again, slid off the slab. "Sometimes you have to straighten them to fit them in the casket. Unpleasant…but necessary. Every job has its unpleasantries, does it not?"