Hard Times, Nevada

By David Rogers

Not many travelers stopped in Hard Times, Nevada. So when one did, it made a bit of a stir.

The stranger pulled in at the gas station and mechanic shop and said his car was making an odd noise. Donovan, the proprietor, head mechanic, and chief busybody, poked around under the hood, put the car on the lift, and finally drove it down the road a mile or two.

“Not a thing amiss, far as I can tell,” was his verdict.

“The funniest part is, I couldn’t say what make or model the car is,” Donovan told the gossips who gathered in the office of his mechanic shop, later that day. “Not a brand or manufacturer’s name on it anywhere. Not even a serial number. I thought I’d seen everything with four wheels, but that’s a new one, for me.”

“Who was driving it?” Lucy Wells asked. She was the mayor of Hard Times, Nevada. It was a more or less inherited position, as her father had been mayor for forty years before her. Or so the story went. She was also the priest of Hard Times’ one church, Our Lady of the Avatar.

“A stranger. Never saw him before.”

“What’s his name?” asked Tom Oxman, Jr., the town’s chief carpenter, bricklayer, painter, and all-around handyman.

“He said his name was Sam Cornwall.”

After he left the car at Donovan’s Garage, the man who called himself Sam Cornwall walked along the street. To the casual observer, he might have been mistaken for a sightseer, killing time while his car was out of service. A diligent student of human behavior, however, would have noticed the sharp eyes and deliberate steps. Such an observer was Jenkins, the pawnbroker, who would not soon forget the odd collection of purchases the stranger made after he stepped in off the dusty street.

“I’ll pick these things up as soon as I get my car from the shop, if that’s okay with you. It’s all a bit much to carry on foot,” Sam Cornwall said.

“No problem,” said Jenkins. If the stranger never returned for his merchandise, well, someone else would eventually buy it.

The man who called himself Sam Cornwall rented a room at the Hard Times Inn. The next morning, he went to pick up his car at Donovan’s mechanic shop, merely nodding when told nothing was wrong with it.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what kind of vehicle is that?” Donovan asked, handing over the keys.

“Oh, it’s just something to get me where I need to be.”

“Where’d you buy it? I ask only because I’ve never seen one quite like it.”

“Buy? No. No one buys one of these. Comes with the job. How much do I owe you for the service?”

“Nothing. I didn’t fix anything. No actual service.”

“Oh, but your knowledge is most appreciated,” said Sam. He held out a one hundred dollar bill with a notch in the corner.

“I couldn’t take your money. Wouldn’t be right. Like I said, I didn’t fix anything.”

When Donovan went back in the office, the one-hundred dollar bill with a notch on the corner lay on his desk, weighed down by the stapler, though he was sure the man who called himself Sam Cornwall never went inside the office.

That afternoon, Donovan told the gossips, “He didn’t seem surprised when I told him I couldn’t find a thing to repair. I think he knew there was nothing wrong.”

“Why’d he stop, then?” asked Al Banner, who tended bar at the Round-Up Saloon.

“I got the feeling he just wanted me to know he was here.”

“Why would he care?” Al wondered

“Maybe he has business around here,” Donovan speculated. “Wants the word to get out so someone will find him.”

“What sort of business?”

“Anybody’s guess, I reckon.”

Jenkins the pawnbroker spoke up. “Whatever his motives, he must be rich. Or must have a rich benefactor. Seems to have plenty of cash, anyway. He came into my shop and bought the strangest collection of junk you ever saw. Said he’d pick it up when he got his car back.”

“Junk? I thought you always say you deal in nothing but quality merchandise,” said Tom Oxman, Sr., the cattle rancher.

“Like truth and beauty, quality is in the eye of the beholder,” Jenkins answered.

“I think you’re mixing your proverbs,” Mayor Lucy said.

Meanwhile, another traveler, still crossing the high desert when night fell, stopped her car by the side of the road. She took the jack from under the back floorboard, removed the rear wheel closest to the highway, and put it in the car. She locked all the doors and walked out into the desert, far enough that her presence would not be obvious from the road, close enough that she could shout, and anyone who stopped would hear.

The Moon rose as the last rays of sunlight faded. She stood still and watched the road. A few cars slowed but kept going. None of them were the one she was watching for.

She waited and watched until after midnight.

“It’s dangerous to be in the desert alone, especially after sundown,” said a voice behind her.

She spun quickly. “Who are you? What do you want?” She tried not to sound afraid.

“It all looks very real, doesn’t it?” asked the man who called himself Sam Cornwall, looking around at the desert, the bright Moon, the distant range of mountains, the faint dome of light from the small town of Hard Times.

She made no answer.

“I expect you know why I’m here.” Sam Cornwall turned so the Moon lit his face. “Otherwise you would not come here, either.” He pointed to her car by the road. “The Avatar’s no Good Samaritan. He’s not going to stop and help you out.”

“Who said I was looking for help? But it got your attention, didn’t it?”

“I already sensed you were here,” he said.

“Sensed? You’re psychic?”

“No. I just know how the game is played.”

“And you think I don’t?”

“I didn’t say that. But then the question is, why you would follow me.”

She hesitated, as if debating whether the question deserved an answer. “You assume I followed you. Like I can’t find my own way. A place like this . . . No one comes here unless they’re looking for something. Or running from something. Somehow, I don’t think you’re running away.”

“Assume I accept your premise,” Cornwall said. “What are you running from? Or whom?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Revenge,” she said. “Or justice, if you think there’s a difference. How did you know I would be here?”

“A full Moon, in the east or west, still casts a long shadow. What is your name?”

“You might say I’m Katrina. Some call me Kat.”

“Well, Kat, why should I not send you on your way? Tracking the Avatar is one thing. Vengeance is quite another. You’re likely to be in my way.”

“I ask permission from no mortal man.” She looked him up and down. In the silvering light, he might have been taken for a ghost.

“You do assume a lot,” he observed.

“What would you deny? Humanity or mortality?”

But he was already walking across the desert, back toward Hard Times, Nevada.

The man who called himself Sam Cornwall spent several more days in town. He walked up and down the street, pausing occasionally to study the town and its inhabitants. One particularly long pause took place near the white stone church, its twin rounded spires topped with black crosses.

“Their scientists call it dark matter and dark energy,” the woman who called herself Kat said. She had seen him from the sidewalk on the other side of the street and joined him. He continued staring at the church and its crosses. “They think the old ways represented by temples and myths are just quaint, charming, stories,” she said. “They have no idea what really holds their universe together.”

Sam Cornwall made no response to these scientific and anthropological observations.

“You knew the rules when you took the job,” he said, finally. “You can’t fall in love with the pawns.”

“What makes you think I fell in love with a pawn?”

“I checked the archive. Everything becomes part of the history.”

“So I broke a rule or two. So did you. The first commandment, in fact⸺’Never question the wisdom of the Avatar,’” she quoted. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen him yet?”

“No,” he said. “You didn’t expect him to show up on the street in broad daylight, surely?”

“Not really, no. So, are you just going to stand here all day and stare at the church, or what?”

“I’m going to talk to the priest. Lucy Wells. Who, I understand, is also the mayor. You have any plans?”

“I think I’ll get a drink.”

The woman who called herself Kat stepped into the Round-Up Saloon and asked for one draft beer and one shot of gin. She told Al Banner, the bartender, a curious tale.

“I was never even supposed to be in this game,” she said. “I was created to be a movie star. Instead, I wound up being used as the voice of a nerdy little program designed to help people learn new languages. New to them, anyway. My agent said the language gig wasn’t sexy enough, but it would pay the bills while I honed my skills. Don’t misunderstand. I have nothing against learning other languages. The thing is, I could’ve been a star. But then I got another offer, to play the gunslinger in an Old West game, something like this town, but a hundred and fifty years ago. My agent said that gig paid twice what the language program did. So I took it. At the time it seemed like a step up.

“And guess what? I fell in love with a girl. We were going to run away and get married. Some place where a girl could have more freedom than in that little town. We’d both leave that game, because she had only a tiny role anyway, clerk at the bank, the one who just looks scared and hands over the money when robbers show up. Like me, she was destined for better things. We could go farther west, start our own ranch. No reason a girl can’t succeed as well as anybody else, if she shoots straight and sits tall in the saddle. That’s how our story was supposed to go, as far as we were concerned.”

“Yet here you are, drinking alone, before five o’clock,” Al observed. “I’m guessing it didn’t work out the way you planned.”

“You guess right. She got shot. The Avatar decided the Dirty Outlaw type would ride into town. Or maybe that was just how the game was designed, so it could have been inevitable that he would show up, however the Avatar played it. As those stories go, the local sheriff was a drunk, or coward, or who knows, but he was no good at protecting the town. So, naturally, it fell to me to have it out with the Dirty Outlaw. And the Outlaw’s first shot went wild and killed Ann-Marie. That was my girl. She shouldn’t even have been on the street. But she was the independent type. One of

the things I loved about her. Of course, that was how the Avatar was playing her, too. It’s hard to know, sometimes, if we’re acting on our own free will or if we’re just doing what we’re designed to do.”

Al Banner wiped down the perfectly clean bar, as he was supposed to do, and offered no response.

“My first shot went right through the Outlaw’s left eye, my second through the right,” Kat said. “So by the time I saw Annie had been shot down, he was already dead. Lucky for him. Otherwise, his death would have been slow and painful. I’d have seen to it.”

“Reckon he had it coming,” Al agreed.

Kat said, “The story didn’t have to go that way. Ann-Marie didn’t have to be shot. She didn’t need to die. Except that’s how the Avatar played it. So I’m going to track the bastard down. When I find him, I’m going to make him pay. What I’m going to do to him, well, the Dirty Outlaw would’ve gotten off easy by comparison.”

“Was it really this — what did you call him⸺the Avatar? Was it really his fault?” Al wondered aloud. “I mean, outlaws shoot people, don’t they? Part of the job, I expect.”

“Hey, whose side are you on?”

“It’s just a question. All I do is tend bar. I don’t take sides.”

“Good. Because what I know is, the Avatar was running the game when Ann-Marie got shot, so the Avatar is going to pay.”

“Sounds like it all happened a long time ago.”

“Love is timeless. I’m not carrying a grudge, if that’s what you mean. It’s just a matter of balancing the books. Doesn’t matter how long it takes. The Avatar has to win or lose, just like everybody else. If I enjoy watching him lose, well, that’s just a bonus.”

Kat drank half her beer in one gulp, wiped her lip on her sleeve, and asked, “So how did you end up in this game?”

“Game? You mean tending bar?” Al shrugged. “It’s a living. Beats chasing cows across the desert.”

“No, I mean This Game.” Kat said. She pronounced the words with capitals. It was a skill only a good voice artist could claim. She killed the shot of gin in one drink.

“What game?” Al bent to get a clean cloth from under the bar, though the one he had was unsoiled.

“Oh, I see. You’re a pawn, not a player.” Kat finished her beer, put a hundred-dollar gold coin on the bar, and said. “You won’t remember any of that story I just told you. Keep the change.”

“Refill?” Al asked, standing, but the woman who called herself Kat had already gone, leaving the gold coin on the bar.

The man who called himself Sam Cornwall emerged from the church an hour and fifteen minutes later. He was wearing a gold star over the pocket of his denim shirt. Kat emerged from the Round-Up. He waved and walked over to her.

“As long as you’re here, you may as well give me a hand,” he said.

“Hand?” The woman called Kat arched her eyebrows.

“I have some things to carry.”

“I don’t remember taking a job as a deputy. Or sherpa. What things, anyway?”

“At some point, you may as well admit we’re on the same side here. It’s why I let you stay, after all.”

“Are we? But anyway, you don’t have the authority to⸺”

“Actually, I do, now.” He pointed to the gold star on his chest. “But that’s beside the point. Now, anyway. We both want the same thing.”

“You want to kill the Avatar and leave his body for buzzard food?”

“No. You know the Avatar has no material body in this iteration, anyway. We can’t kill it⸺or him, her, them, whoever, but we can make it a lot harder for them to win the game. Maybe even impossible.”

“If you say so,” the woman called Kat said. “But what exactly do you want from the Avatar?”

“Not much. Just peace and quiet. Next iteration, I don’t want to be a dragon hunter, or a car thief, or some guy with a gun who shoots stuff just to shoot stuff. I just want to stay here and be me. I’ve lost too many friends, when we were sent on quests and adventures that were just somebody else’s idea of fun. Enough is enough.”

“So, small-town sheriff forever? Life among the pawns? That’s your dream?”

“You object? Nobody’s asking you to stay.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not. Now what can’t you carry on your own?”

“I’ll show you. It’s in the trunk of my car. I need to take it into the hotel room so I can put it together.” They walked back toward where Sam was staying, at the Hard Times Inn, right next to the Lonesome Tumbleweed Inn.

“It’s hard to see why a town this small and remote needs two hotels,” observed the woman called Kat.

“I’d guess it doesn’t,” said the man who called himself Sam Cornwall. “But, as the philosopher said, the world is badly made. Superfluous lodging is the least of its problems.”

“What is all this junk, anyway?” the woman called Kat asked.

“Well, that’s a computer monitor, the old-fashioned kind, and⸺”

“For Pixel’s sake, I know what it is. I mean, why do you have it? What’s it for?”

“It’s all for parts. To build the device so I can find the Avatar,” the man who called himself Sam Cornwall said. “I talked to the priest, at the church. She told me the Devil is coming to town, and he’s expected any day. It’s not common knowledge. The priest doesn’t want a panic on her hands.”

“Good for her, but so what?”

“So that’s why she hired me to be Sheriff.”

“So she’s a player, not just a pawn?”

“It’s hard to tell. She’s not like you and me, but she understands a lot more than the average pawn. Probably just because of her training as a priest.”

“She doesn’t even know you. Why would she trust you with that job? And who put her in charge of choosing the Sheriff? Bit medieval, isn’t it? Didn’t this town ever hear of separation of church and state?”

“She specified she was acting in her capacity as mayor when she offered me the job. The distinction seemed important to her and didn’t matter to me, so I didn’t question or challenge it. Anyway, you know why she hired me: because that’s how these stories always go,” he said. “The locals know better than to take the job, so the stranger who just came to town gets the star.”

“And she thinks you can stop the Devil? Or appease him somehow, or get their God to stop the Devil for you?”

“Well, obviously. These people think the Avatar is God. If you profess to understand the Avatar, well, then, you must know how to deal with the Devil, too.”

“A questionable assumption,” Kat said. “How do you know they don’t think of the Avatar as the Devil?”

“Lucy told me. They just don’t. Not that it matters. You know how it works. One town’s God is another town’s Devil.”

“But why did the priest even talk to you about the situation?”

“I asked. I can be very persuasive. Also, she wanted me to take the job. She thought she was persuading me. You going to help me carry, or not?”
“Only if you tell me why you want this stuff. How you plan to use it. I don’t see any silver bullets here.”

“Because the Avatar is not a werewolf.”

“Silver is classier than lead. Always. It’s not just about what you’re planning to shoot. Or whom. I still don’t see what you can to do with this junk.”

“Fine. I’ll tell you,” said the man who called himself Sam Cornwall. “I bought the ancient CRT computer monitor for the magnets. The exercise bike will be converted to generate power, to charge the batteries, if necessary. I need the cordless vacuums only for the batteries, to boost the signal I’ll generate, using the magnets and radio. The pair of remote-control race cars are intended to mobilize the apparatus, once it’s ready to go. The small dish antenna is necessary to focus the signal. The Doctor Strange comic book⸺well, I got that just because it’s cool. Who doesn’t love Doctor Strange?”

“That all raises more questions than it answers.”

“You asked. I told you. Are you going to help, or not?”

“There’s not that much to carry. You just enjoy making me complicit in your bad ideas. I’m telling you, silver bullets are the way to go.”

The next day, Al Banner showed the boys at the mechanic shop the gold coin the woman called Kat had left on the bar.

“Never seen anything like it,” Ronnie Knott said. “Must be some kind of foreign money.” Ronnie Knott was the manager of the Hard Times Bank and Trust Company.

“Probably counterfeit,” said Tom Oxman, Sr. “You should track her down and make her give you real money.”

“No, I’d rather have the coin. It’s too unusual to let go,” Al said.

“Wonder where she got it,” Knott mused.

“Same place that odd little car came from, I’d bet. The one I told you about the other day,” Donovan said.

“How would you know?” Tom Oxman, Jr., demanded.

“Just a hunch.”

“She also told me a weird tale, something about gunslingers. Wish I could remember it,” said Al.

“Been sampling the merchandise again?” Oxman, Jr., enquired, with a smirk.

“You know I don’t drink,” Al answered.

“I’ll tell you something else,” said Jenkins the pawnbroker. “Our new sheriff doesn’t leave tracks.”

“What do you mean, doesn’t leave tracks?” Donovan asked.

“Exactly what I said. No tracks. I saw him walking in the dust and dirt between the door and the parking lot. Stepped off the sidewalk. No marks in the dirt.”

“So the wind erased the tracks before your nosey nose could go see them,” Oxman, Sr., said.

“There was no wind that day. Still as a church on Monday morning.”

The man who called himself Sam Cornwall and the woman called Kat walked across the desert, each carrying parts of the apparatus he’d assembled from salvaged components. The Moon was now well past full and would not rise until nearly midnight. The last glow of sunset was fading in the west.

“The Avatar leaves no footprints,” she said. “Even when he comes to this side, which he does only rarely.”

“So? Neither do you and I,” said the man who called himself Sam Cornwall. “That didn’t stop us from winding up here together, did it?”

“How do you propose to track him?”

“No need. The Avatar will find us, once the portal is open. But I can sense its presence. It’s coming. Not far beyond the mountains, now.”

“It is a person, not an it. A responsible entity, just like you and me.”

“If you say so.”

“If he’s just over the mountains, why do we need your . . . apparatus? Or the portal you claim it will generate?”

“The portal is for us,” said Sam.” “Have you ever heard of the Minkowski dimension?”

Kat shook her head no.

“Okay. Doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say, we have to bridge the Minkowski dimension in order to reach the Avatar. Otherwise, we might as well be pawns. He can reach us. Play with our very existence, as you know. Thinks we can’t touch him, so we’re helpless. With the portal open, we can reach across, too. Make the Avatar see we’re not pawns, not part of the machine. Not mindless automatons. We make him acknowledge the difference.”

“And if he just keeps treating us like pawns?”

“I’ll convince him. Like I told you before, I can be very persuasive. If not, maybe I’ll just arrest him.”

They walked in silence for a while across the starlit desert.

“So here’s the plan,” said the man who called himself Sam Cornwall. ‘’I open the portal, you reach through and grab the Avatar, and pull him to this side. Then we tell him how things go next, or he’s done for.”

“That’s your plan.”

“You object? Don’t think it will work?”

“I didn’t say that,” the woman called Kat said. “But do I want to point out, once you turn on that device and the Avatar notices what you are up to, all pandemonium is likely to be set loose on us, unless the Avatar is very quickly neutralized.”
“Pandemonium⸺that’s a nice fancy word.”

“I keep it in reserve for special occasions. It means ‘all the demons,’ or something like that. But you’re just procrastinating.”

“Well, okay. Let’s do it.”

The man who called himself Sam Cornwall turned on the apparatus. It hummed, loudly at first and then more quietly. He adjusted the antenna and moved the device a little closer to a patch of air that had begun to glow.

Kat watched him adjust the controls of his device for several more seconds. ‘’You don’t think the Avatar is going to wait forever ’til you get it right, do you?”

A point the size of a dime in the middle of the patch of glowing air darkened. The circle of darkness expanded to the size of a baseball, changed colors, from indigo to bright red, and expanded to the size of an ordinary door. The shifting rainbow colors settled, the view clarified, and a path lined by big trees was seen.

“Wrong portal,” the man who called himself Sam Cornwall said. He turned a knob. The image of a startled young man appeared in the center of the portal. He seemed to speak, but no sound emerged.

The portal contracted and grew cloudy after a few seconds.

“Give me a second. I think I can get the frequency just right for sound, too.”

The cloudy image grew clear again. The startled young man began to look angry and started to type quickly on what appeared to be a computer keyboard.

“I’ve almost got it,” Sam said, and jumped when he heard the shot. He spun. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What I came to do. Like I told you. Revenge. You don’t listen very well, do you, Sheriff?” The woman called Kat held her six shooter up in the classic pose and blew a breath across the end of the still-smoking barrel. “Silver bullet. Still the best way to make a point.”

Sam turned back to the portal, where the young man still looked astonished and angry, but now for a different reason. He stared at the circle of dark blood forming on his chest.

Kat thumbed back the hammer on her six-shooter, leveled it toward the portal, and took aim once more. Sam ducked and so did not see the Avatar slump forward, out of sight.

“Are you done?” the man who called himself Sam Cornwall asked, looking up.

“Close enough. The Avatar won’t trouble us again.”

“That looked like real blood. You shouldn’t even be able to shoot the Avatar, not so he actually bleeds. Not on that side, anyway. I don’t understand how that happened.”

“Silver bullets. They’re not just for werewolves anymore,” the woman called Kat observed. “Lead won’t penetrate the portal, but silver will. Also flint, so a good old-fashioned arrow or spear would do the trick. You ought to know things like that, Sheriff.”

“You didn’t have to kill him. He could have been useful. He might’ve answered a lot of questions.”

“He didn’t have to kill my friend, either. I don’t need to question him,” she said. “I know plenty already. Besides, who would take the Avatar’s word for anything? We’re all just pawns to him and his kind, remember? When did you think he would answer your questions⸺before or after pandemonium ensued? You’re going to ask him what the purpose of life is? Or the true nature of ultimate reality? I’m telling you, it’s turtles, all the way down. End of story. As for the purpose of life, I’d rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. But why sell yourself short? Ruling in heaven sounds best. You coming with?” she asked.

Sam shook his head. “He might have answered some questions. You couldn’t know. Now we’ll never know. And you may find revenge is sweet only at first.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kat said, and jumped through the shrinking hole in the air. “Meet the new Avatar,” she added, looking back at Sam.

“Same as the old Avatar? Playing God with people’s lives?”

“No. You stay on that side, and I’ll take this side. Live and let live. Deal?”

“Deal,” the man who called himself Sam Cornwall said, turned off the apparatus, and began to roll it back toward Hard Times Nevada.

This time, he left footprints.