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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Padre
Jason Hunt
Kyle William Lees rode slowly in the darkness through the center of town. The Cantina at the far end was well-lit, but something was different. The horse hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Kyle muttered. “It’s just there ain’t no piano tonight.”
Kyle’s brow furled beneath the brim of his hat. He did not like the silence any more than the horse did.
He dismounted and teethered the horse to a rail outside the Cantina. He felt that both .45s were in their holsters and pushed through the swinging doors into the light.
The eight or so tables were all taken, but the stools at the bar had been vacated and their prior occupants stood in a semi-circle around some sort of commotion. There was some laughter from the spectators, but not all were joining in the merriment.
Kyle walked up to the small crowd. A short, heavy-set fellow looked over his shoulder and then moved aside leaving a space for Kyle. Through the opening he saw two cowboys on either side of a drunken man on his hands and knees. One put his boot on the man’s side and pushed him over. With the man on his back, Kyle could make out the white collar. The scene did not sit well with him.
“Leave the padre be,” he said. The noise in the barroom faded, and the two men turned away from the priest and stood facing Kyle.
“Now there, friend, I don’t believe I heard you right,” one said, shooting an amused look at the other. “It sounded to me like you were telling us to leave this here drunken papist alone.”
The fore and middle finger of Kyle’s right hand tingled. Not bad enough for him to think about using his left, though.
“You heard me right…friend,” Kyle said. “How about you? You hear me right, too.”
The other fellow looked from Kyle to his partner, then back at Kyle.
“No habla Inglés,” he said with a heavy Texas drawl. Several of the people gathered round laughed.
“Hablar algo rápidamente ,” Kyle said softly, “o me veré obligado a disparar.”
The men looked at each other. Their smiles were a little less enthusiastic. The priest sat up.
“He said, ‘you’d better say something quick or he’ll shoot you.’”
Everyone but Kyle, the priest and the two cowboys scattered, most pushing out the swinging doors into the night. The bartender moved slowly to the side of the bar and then disappeared through a door on the side. The few drunks who had stayed to watch were huddled in the far corners of the barroom, hoping to escape any stray bullets. In truth, the ones who had stayed only did so because they were too drunk to make it all the way to the door without falling.
“There’s two of us,” the one who didn’t speak English said.
“There’s six bullets in my revolver,” Kyle said.
“You that good?” The other one asked in little more than a whisper.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Kyle said. He normally wouldn’t have waited this long, but he was hoping he could talk rather than shoot his way out of this. He was tired and was hoping to spend the night in town. If he had to gun these two down, he’d have to move on and sleep on the trail.
The priest slowly and carefully got to his feet, looked at the two men as he shuffled out of the way, and crossed himself.
“Now you two can walk on out,” Kyle said, “or you can wait and get carried out when it’s all said and done. Me, I’d walk.”
The priest meanwhile leaned over the bar and came up with a bottle of whiskey. He pulled the cork with his teeth, spit it out on the countertop and took a long swallow. He looked from his tormentors to Kyle.
“Hermanos,” he said to the tormentors, “Go on, there is no point in dying esta noche….”
The one on the right slowly raised his hands to shoulder level.
“The padre’s right,” he said. “We were just funnin’. Nothing worth dying over.”
The other man raised his hands as well.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice trembling slightly, “we were just havin’ fun. We didn’t mean nothin’.”
Kyle nodded and stepped slowly aside, giving the men a clear path to the door. The two of them moved slowly in that direction, never taking their eyes off Kyle and never letting their hands fall below the level of their shoulders.
“Buenos noches, putas,” Kyle said under his breath. The two men smiled stupidly and continued to back toward the door until they were at it, then the pushed through and disappeared into the night.
“Muchas gracias,” the priest said to Kyle taking another long sip of whiskey. “You shouldn’t have risked your own life for the life of a drunken priest.”
“I didn’t,” Kyle said.
The priest smiled.
“You are a Catholic?” he asked.
Kyle took off his hat, laid it on a table. It was a distinctive hat. Black with pewter ornaments the size of silver dollars on all four compass points.
“No.”
“But I think you are,” the priest said. “You were never baptized?”
Kyle put out his hand for the bottle and the priest passed it to him. Kyle took a drink and passed it back.
“My mother was from Italy,” Kyle said. “So my father let her have her way and get me baptized. But that was the extent of it. I’m not Catholic.”
“Once a Catholic,” the priest said, thoughtfully, “you are always a Catholic. Unless, of course, Santo Pedro has excommunicated you. That has not happened, has it?”
Kyle sat down at the table and watched the priest with amusement.
“Not that I’ve gotten wind of,” Kyle said.
“Good.” The priest sat beside him. “Then you are Catholic still. Would you like me to hear your confession?”
Kyle laughed out loud.
“No, thank you, padre. I don’t want to keep you up all night.”
The priest shrugged.
“I am often up all night. How long has it been since your last confession?”
“Hmm,” Kyle said, thinking, “I don’t believe I have ever confessed…to anything.”
“Then I will hear your first confession,” the priest said.
“No, thank you, padre. I don’t believe, so I’d just be wasting your time.”
“Many do not believe….” The priest lowered his head. Kyle thought he might have fallen asleep.
“Padre?”
“I am praying for your soul.”
“Oh, well, then, by all means, carry on. It’s not much of a soul, but it’s the only one I’ve got, so you may as well pray for it.”
As they spoke the bartender reappeared and the drunks who had remained drifted back to their tables like wraiths. Not many, but some of the men who had fled at the hint of trouble now pushed back through the doors and returned to their drinks and card games. Many looked disappointed that the violence had not come to pass.
“…ora pro nobis…” the priest muttered softly.
Nearby, one man slapped his hand on a table.
“No foolin’?!” he said in disbelief. “You mean he’s still alive after all?”
The other man, basking in the attention of his revelation, went on.
“Sure as I’m sittin’ here, they caught up with him in New Mexico of all places, a little town called Shakespeare.”
Kyle stopped what he was doing and listened.
“What was he doing in Shakespeare?” another man asked. “I thought he was killed back east.”
“Naw,” the man in the know continued, “he was hiding out in Shakespeare. Married and with a kid, no less.”
Kyle stood up and walked over to the table. Everyone stopped talking and pretended not to see him.
“Who you talkin’ about?” he asked. “Who’d they catch up with in Shakespeare?”
Nobody spoke. No one knew what Kyle’s interest was, and so they were all afraid to say something that he might not want to hear. Finally, the man in the know was willing to risk it all to be the deliverer of his sensational news.
“They finally caught up with Tom Brennan,” he said, “the gunfighter.”
If Kyle’s face gave away anything, no one at the table was smart or sober enough to pick up on it.
“You heard of him?” the storyteller asked.
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “I’ve heard of him.”
“Sounds like you might have done more than just heard of him,” the man said tentatively.
“Yup,” Kyle said, deciding whether or not to stay the night in town after all.
“Well,” the man ventured, pushing his luck, “what’s he to you? You got a score to settle with him?”
The others around the table were looking at their friend like he was crazy, but they felt a new-found respect that bordered on awe. A few were honestly expecting Kyle to shoot him dead on the spot. Instead, Kyle smiled, reached for his black hat, and put it on.
“You might say that,” Kyle said. “He saved my life.”
The table was silent. Tom Brennan wasn’t known for saving lives.
“Well,” the storyteller said in earnest, “then I’m right sorry. They’re fixin’ to hang him.”
Kyle tipped the brim of his hat. The pewter ornaments caught the lamplight and reflected it dully.
“I thank you kindly for the information.”
He strode across the wooden floor, his boot heels sounding loudly in the quiet barroom, and stopped just inside the door. The priest walked unsteadily up to him.
“Thank you again, amigo” he said. “Are you thinking about staying for one more drink?”
Kyle shook his head and indicated several men standing on the wooden porch of the General Store across the street.
“Does it strike you as sort of strange, those fellas standing there in the dark?” He asked. “They keep looking from this here door and then down that street towards the church.”
The priest peered out into the night.
“I can hardly see them,” he said.
“They’re just standing there, against the building, as though they are waiting for something to happen….”
One of the men who had come back into the bar was laughing. He had been steadily getting louder and drunker.
“…so I slapped her hard. I figure, I’m payin’, I ain’t about to have no loud-mouthed redhead tell me what I can and what I can’t do…”
He got up, swaggered a little, and picked up a big white Stetson from the table beside where he had been sitting. He was tall and muscularly, like Kyle.
“And you know what,” he said, dropping the hat crookedly onto his greasy black hair, “I going to go right back over there, and see if she’s changed her tune…”
Kyle reached into his front pocket and extracted a twenty dollar gold piece.
“You know,” Kyle said, “That is one fine Stetson you’ve got there. I’ve been savin’ up for one. In fact, I’ll give you this twenty dollar gold piece for that hat. I’ll even throw in my own hat, so as you don’t have to walk out into the night bare-headed.”
The drunk swayed and looked at Kyle as if trying to bring him into focus.
“You want to buy my hat?”
“I sure do, friend.”
“And you wanna give me twenty U.S. dollars for it?”
Kyle smiled.
“Twenty U.S. dollars and a not too shabby hat to replace it.”
The stranger squinted and looked suspiciously at Kyle. Then he stood up straight and smiled.
“Well if you’re fool enough to pay that, I’m wise enough to take it.”
Kyle handed him the coin, and the man passed Kyle his Stetson. Kyle took off his own hat and placed in on the drunk’s head.
“It’s been a pleasure doin’ business with you,” Kyle said.
The man looked back at his companions and laughed loudly.
“Well, I’ll be danged,” he said, and headed for the door.
Kyle looked over at the priest.
“Now you may want to say a quick prayer for our friend there…”
Before the priest could respond, the drunk with Kyle’s hat pushed through the doors. Gunfire exploded and the man crumpled in a heap on the ground. Kyle looked over at the priest.
“Now you can ask for forgiveness on my behalf, padre.”
He counted to three in his head, and then stepped through the swinging doors into the night. The two cowboys who had been tormenting the priest were twenty yards away walking toward the fallen man.
“Wrong fella,” Kyle said.
The two went for their guns, but Kyle had drawn and fired twice before either of them cleared leather. Both men rocked back and fell to the ground. A black mark appeared on front of each man’s shirt and slowly spread in all directions.
Kyle holstered his revolver and then bent over the dead man at his feet. He picked up his hat from the dirt and removed the Stetson he was wearing and laid it over the man’s face. Then he returned his own hat to his head.
He stepped down into the street. The men who had been in front of the General Store had seen what they came to see and had disappeared into the dark.
Kyle looked over his shoulder at the priest standing in the door, making a sign of the cross over the deceased.
“So long, padre,” he said. “I don’t reckon those two fellas down the street will be giving you any more trouble.”
Kyle untethered his horse and swung up into the saddle. He rode off in the direction of Shakespeare.
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