“Yule Sherwin, do you intend to work at nothin' but whiskey all day long?”

“I reckon,” he raised his glass. “The coffin-maker's work is never done.”

“Shit,” Misty scoffed and shook her head. “You are drunk.”

“Well,” Yule winked at her. “I'm working on it.”

She bent from laughter and leaned on her broom. The hem of her maid's get-up emboldened ornery men past restraint. They whistled and stomped their feet – some gestured toward their laps or performed cunnilingus upon invisible nethers. Misty rolled her eyes and Yule chuckled and drank his whiskey.

“Contempt does keen your beauty even further,” he said.

“Fuck if I ain't the fairest, then.” Her eyes narrowed and, turning to face the other patrons, she proclaimed: “Hey assholes! This ain't some peep-show – this is The Sleeping Bare – and it'll be two dollars for your tongue or your prick or what-ever-you-has down-there.” She motioned toward her own organ.

The pianist had his work cut out for him if he was going to rival that applause. The bordello resounded and there was instant camaraderie – men swaying and clinking their mugs. Misty reaped their admiration, curtsied and resumed her sweeping. The girls came prowling because they could hear cider being guzzled. Some strutted with their breasts unfettered, pausing to whisper their lewd menus into the ears of men otherwise engaged in poker. Public fellatio was known to erupt at any moment and often without much forewarning. At noon in the thoroughfare a fellow would holler: “Whores-a-plenty! One of every hue! Whore's of every sort!”

That was all honest enough advertising, Yule reckoned – but he wasn't so inclined. The bordello had won his patronage simply by being an endless source of whiskey, conveniently located directly across the road from his own carpentry shop.

If across the way a customer arrived at his door, he could see it from his seat at the bar and react accordingly. Red Junction's most lucrative enterprise may have been Color, but the coffin-trade was an up-and-coming contender. The sheriff might arrive in the morning and order a box or two. The doctor might send a note about evening time, and every-so-often a dollar piece. Folks with kin back East were spat from the Frontier and hurried under clouds of flies across the plains in those impersonal pine boxes. Yule tilted the whiskey to pour himself another shot but it had run dry. Outside, two men were braving the deluge, leading a burro whose cargo was a stiff-legged corpse. They stopped across the road, outside his woodworks, and tied the burro to a post.

“I am not the fucking one today,” Yule growled.

“Pardon?” the bartender asked.

“Don't you have any full bottles? When I ask for a bottle don't you know I want it whole?”

The tender snorted, “Yule, you don't really want that.”

Morning showers had swept across the valley, melting the thoroughfare and rendering it quicksand. Yule watched the men unload the corpse from their burro and – at a loss for words – mouthed his rage without sound. He was merely the coffin-maker; not the mortician. The body should be delivered to the doctor. Here they came, though, with the dead man reclined between them like a drunk in a hammock. The pair was waddling across the muddy road, delivering the departed directly unto him at the bordello – not even having the decency to allow Yule an unmolested spell for drinking.

“I am not here,” he told the tender, and he crept away from the bar. Taking a seat at a table just inside the Bare's tavern-doors, he pinned his chin to his chest, and pretended at being asleep.

The sopping procession came inside with the body and stomped the mud off their boots. The lead pallbearer held the corpse under the armpits and his partner gripped the ankles like the handles of a wheelbarrow. Yule slit his eyes just barely and pretended to snore. They went past him, paying no mind to the day-drunk having his siesta – and instead brought the cadaver to the bar-top and propped him up on a stool. The pallbearers standing on either side kept the corpse from collapsing. Yule could smell the final evacuation of the departed's bowels, and before long the sour bouquet was noticed by the tender, too.

“Fuck you fellas after?”

“Mine comrade,” one of them answered, “requires a mouth at least in which he may deposit his seed – dependent upon his wishes cunt may also be called for.”

The bartender frowned.

“Our girls don't make habit of intercoursin' with those departed.”

“Pardon? Do reckon what? Departed? Naw. He's not but deeply slept – having fallen into dreaming on the trail after unspeakable suffering at the hands of savage, heathen, dirt-eating demons – Apaches, motherfucker! You know 'em?”

It was a bold lie, claiming the corpse was warm – and Yule abandoned his false napping to have a better view at the brewing conflict. Both men were clad in gray flannel, an indication of their allegiance to the Westman Mining Company – and Yule knew that meant they were hard-asses, alright. That flannel said they were accustomed to the conveyance of dead men.

The lead pallbearer who did the speaking was a sneering cyclops. His left eye was obscured by a tawny patch of leather held in place by a thin lasso encircling his skull. His partner was tall and broad and stared straight ahead like an automaton whose facial cogs had jammed. His palate was cleft and the fur of his beard was a drowned vermin, straggled and matted in his orifice. Here-and-there teeth were visible at irregular angles. It was such a perversion of the common human form that Yule could not help but gawk. For all he could gather, that hair-lip was such a vicious ravine it might have been cleaved by a hatchet.

“The Sleeping Bare prides itself on cleanliness,” the bartender began, reciting a mantra. “So get your stinkin' fuckin' compadre outside.”

The cyclops was adept at expressing antipathy by one-eye only, and he glared by that lone organ and spat back:

“I'm tellin' you twice now, cocksucker: he's just deeply slept.”

The tender drew a sawed-off shotgun from behind the bar and the patrons seated along it fled with their mugs. He cocked his head at the cyclops.

“Time to move along,” he said.

“Is that how it is? Does a bordello land on us wherein white heroes are refused twat? Do you sympathize with the heathens?”

“Gentlemen.” The Madame had materialized and by Yule's estimate she was not a moment too soon. She was well-aged but had aged-well, and hers was a cool head beneath auburn and gray curls. “I assure you the Sleeping Bare celebrates the deeds of our brave highwaymen.”

“Afternoon, ma'am,” the cyclops sand, and tipped his brim. He elbowed his silent partner and the hair-lip bowed his head, too. “Do please forgive my hot blood, but your man does not seem to fathom the depth of the oath I've made to mine friend. This hero wanted only to see his prick wetted one last time here in this – his favored bordello – and I mean to see it done come hell or high water.”

“Allow me to apologize on Isaac's behalf.” The Madame nodded to the tender and he slid his sawed-off back behind the bar. Taking up his rag once more, he swept across the bar-top, shaking his head and muttering.

“No harm done.” The cyclops spit tobacco on the floor beside the spittoon.

“Misty shall see to your friend's request,” the Madame advised. “Upstairs, in the room marked number seven. Now please, do hurry and relieve my parlor of his stench. Great lengths are taken toward keeping this dwelling odor-free.”

“Much obliged,” he said, and the motley pallbearers hoisted the dead from its stool.

“Madame!” Before he could think better of it, Yule was on his feet and hurrying ahead to interrupt the path of the grotesque procession. “I had thought to call upon Misty awhile.” The pair paused at his insistence and shuffled their feet, squirming like a dog full of piss with the weight of the dead between them. Eyes all upon him, Yule Sherwin felt fucking foolish right then, and his collar was tight on his throat. “I – I had thought to call upon Misty, mayhap.”

“Make fuckin' way!” The cyclops snarled and the hair-lip pressed past him and the corpse brushed against his side. Yule's near hand touched its cold skin without premeditation and the flesh was clammy from being under the rain. Flinching, he saw the corpse's face for an instant. The departed was just a boy – a tall youth with his scalp sawed and gnarled.

That brush with death made Yule gag and forgo arguing any more. The Madame patted Yule's breast as she followed after the procession. She cackled and fanned herself:

“Give sweet Misty half an hour, Mr Sherwin – that should suffice – if this boy's prick is stiff as the rest of him.”

Yule Sherwin slunk back to his seat. Put politely, he had seen a celibate stretch, and was shamed by his own dysfunctional erection. It was not a matter of physical defect nor injury – not like the hair-lip nor the cyclops and their respective irregularities – it had simply been awhile since he had last felt that throb. Some things, he understood, were better left for matrimony. Still, he had a right to a woman's companionship – her ear and her mind if not her wetter crevices – same as any paying customer. Thus had he come to know Misty on a few occasions, each time growing fonder, and his visits became more regular. It was not abnormal, he told himself, for a man's closest acquaintances to be his dog and his favored prostitute. His favored, platonic prostitute.

And there she was then at the top of the staircase. Misty; cigarette flaring; blonde hair long and pale as sun-glazed spider's silk. She cocked her head and crossed her arms tight against her bosom while she surveyed her impending trick. The stumbling cyclops panted and cursed and the hair-lip climbed the stairs without so much as a grunt. The dead youth wavered between them and the Madame served as the caboose of their ghastly train. Misty drew hard upon her smoke and then the men took the body inside her room and the commotion had past.

Suddenly, Yule’s gut was bearing too much whiskey and he was apt to spew it right there on the parlor's lush carpet. All about him was carnal grinding, dryly-fucking prospectors mounted by their prostitutes. The score of the brothel was a piano-riot in competition with the howls of bought-and-sold ecstasy. All of it reinforced the gross fact: Misty was going to perform with that dead boy. The Madame was imposing blasphemous copulation and he could still hear her laughing at him. He turned his face up toward the top of the stairs and Misty was still there, finishing her cigarette. Their eyes met.

“Later,” she mouthed. “At the place and time.”

It was a coded, silent tongue they shared, and Yule nodded to indicate he understood. They would have a date saved for that night, at about midnight. For a spell they would elope and share some stolen time.

“Bring rum,” she whispered silently, and then she crushed the cigarette beneath her shoe and went inside her chamber to seduce the dead youth.