an excerpt from “I am Billy the Kid” (a novel in progress)

by Michael Blouin

Places a single warm biscuit into his mouth. Enough bread for about three minutes of chewing. Enough time to study the stone chimney that looks as if it may fall in on itself. The windowpanes broken out in places and stuffed with rags.

Aroma of apples.

The rough weave of the fabric of his clothing and how it braces the skin. New Mexico morning cold.

Impossible tilt of his chair.

He speaks:

You mess with me I’m gonna eat your food. Leave you dead or dying.

There’s this story my mother told me. I’ll tell it to you. Called The Devil’s Bridge. It’s a story from Ireland in the old days and it concerns a woman who has these sheep, you see, and she has to get them across the river and she ain’t got a bridge. And the devil, you see, he’s there, I don’t remember how, just, there he is, and he says to her I will build you a bridge so she says fine. That’s what I need, a bridge, you know, she knows it’s the devil see, and so he makes this bridge appear and he tells her only thing is first soul that crosses this bridge, their soul is mine to keep and she says okay, all of a sudden she throws this stick and her little dog he goes running across the bridge and so she wins, you see, against the devil. Devil is some sore at that. And that’s the end of it. That’s the end of the story.

And I think it’s a stupid story because first of all you don’t piss off the devil. He’s gonna come back at you. Let me ask you something, you believe in the devil? First of all you better say yes and even if you don’t are you willing to take the chance to piss him off? Plus, in the story, he’s right there so she don’t have no choice but to believe in him and then she goes rilin’ him up anyway. That’s not the way I’d play it. And let me tell you something about the devil, he don’t give forty fucks whether you believe in him or not. In fact, he’d prefer if you don’t even give him a second thought. Easier for him to get some work done that way. Other thing is what about that fucking dog man? Bitch just throws over her dog like that? He’d never do that to her I bet, not if I know dogs.

Anyway, just a story. Woman’s not real. Dog’s not real. Stick’s not real. River. Sheep. Hell, there’s not even a bridge. But the rest of the story? I’ll leave that up to you.

Anyway. I do. I’ve seen his face. He showed it to me. Once.

Billy the Kid gazes to the ceiling. As if at nothing.

}z�