Excerpt from The Moon and Dead Indians:
BILL: Remember that night, hermano? Remember your promise.
JON’s crying subsides. A coyote call.
You want more to drink?
JON: We drank too much.
BILL: Did we really, Jonny? Is that possible?
JON: That night we did.
BILL: Ya! Is that why you forget?
JON: We’d swiped a whole keg of booze.
The moonlight is harsh.
BILL: What was we trying to forget?
JON: No. We used it as bait.
BILL: We was hunting, then?
JON: We set it out in the bright moonlight back of the saloon and waited.
BILL: Waited? What in hell for?
JON: For something in hell to happen.
BILL: Boy, that was hard. All that booze just yards away and us parched. What happened, Jonny boy?
JON: I fell asleep.
MA comes and stands in the door to the cabin, the Winchester rifle in her hands.
BILL: You got to learn how to drink, mijito.
JON: But when I woke up, there was that Indian boy there.
BILL: That wasn’t no boy.
JON: A skinny little Indian who acted all pretty like a girl.
BILL: How can they let him get away with that?
JON: Flapping his eyelashes like wings.
BILL: Indios culiados.
JON: You were making signs to him.
BILL: No speakum American.
JON: Getting him to drink.
BILL: He sure understood whiskey.
JON: He shouldn’t have been hanging around town like that.
BILL: Sure. Served the little sissy right.
JON: It got real crazy.
BILL: Shit, the redskin liked white boys. What can I say?
JON: You tried to get him to pucker up and he! (makes a raspberry)
BILL: Ya, I decked the fucker. Don’t play coy boy with Billy.
JON cries quietly.
What’s wrong, Juanito. Tell your Billy what’s wrong.
JON: Why couldn’t we just leave him alone?
BILL: Had to teach that Indio culiado a lesson.
JON: I didn’t want to do it.
BILL: You did it. Hermanos de sangre, mijito.
JON: It was so easy.
BILL: A sharp edge is all you need.
JON: So weird.
BILL: Slip it along the hairline and pull and hey it peels off easy as any hide. Such pretty long black hair. Pity we couldn’t show it off.
JON: It was crazy how he didn’t wake up then.
BILL: That’s why I went for his balls!
JON: Jesus.
BILL: Fucker’s not going to ignore Billy.
JON: Jesus.
BILL: That got him going.
JON: He was screaming.
BILL: What’s wrong, fella? What’s wrong?
JON: He was running around.
BILL: You lose something?
JON: He was crying out in that language of his.
BILL: That’ll teach him to speak American.
JON: He looked at me, Billy.
BILL: Hell, I couldn’t stop laughing.
JON: His dark eyes looked at me.
BILL: I could not get a hold on it.
JON: He reached out his hand covered in blood.
BILL: I was pissing myself.
JON: The blood looks so black in this light.
BILL: And you, you shit, you threw up all that good whiskey.
JON: So black. He looked right at me.
BILL: And fuck, all that racket he was making, screaming like a chicken in a coyote’s jaws, brought all those jerks out of the saloon. Never saw so many people get so sober so quick in my whole fucking life.
JON: I was sober.
***end of excerpt***