Cowboys And Injuns (Part One)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

Douglas Thacker walked through the town centre on a Saturday afternoon in the full cowboy getup that he wore during the bulk of his free time. “What the fuck?” a squat, powerful looking man with a huge beer gut dragging an equally portly Staffie on an unnecessarily massive chain said to his companion as he walked out of the Giffard Arms. “What soddin' planet are you on, mate?” Doug ignored the jibe, because he had received a few beatings for answering rough looking men back over the years.

Doug sported a pair of embroidered calf leather cowboy boots, Levi 501's with leather chaps strapped over them and a beaded deerskin shirt supposedly made on a Navaho reservation but made in Taiwan according to the label that Doug was incapable of reading that he had ordered for a hefty price online. He had a battered ten gallon hat and a dark brown Texas Duster coat that came almost to his ankles that he purchased second-hand after admiring the overcoat worn by Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider. Hanging at his sides were a pair of blank firing pearl handled Colt 45's on a black belt with silver studs and inlaid holsters, and on his shirt was pinned a tin Sheriff’s badge from a child's cowboy outfit that he had bought a while back from a car boot sale for fifty pence.

The would be cowboy liked folk to call him Wyatt or Sheriff Earp or simply Sheriff, but that only happened in a single place in the whole wide world. Wyatt Twerp, his young nephew started calling him a few years ago when the kid was a cheeky ten year old, and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the name stuck, and most people knew him as Wyatt Twerp.

Doug was jeered by a gang of youths on the opposite side of the road. “Look, there goes Buffalo Bill!” one of them yelled. “Worra daft lookin' twat.....” Though Doug ought have been used to the name-calling and pointing and sniggering by now it was something that would always upset him. Not enough to stop him from wearing his cowboy gear, though, because in his mind cowboys were the beau-ideal of super-coolness. He had mild learning difficulties, or so his school teachers and a number of Health Service professionals said many years back, and nurture rather than nature was to blame. His parents had treated their seven offspring, five lads and two girls, with varying degrees of brutality, but Doug always received the shittiest end of the stick because his mother and father hated the sight of him.

In the early eighties his father had flung him down the stairs in a drunken rage for pissing the bed, busting his thigh bone and shattering his pelvis, which caused him to walk wide-legged like a saddle-sore a cowboy without really trying. “Silly fucker got pissed up an' fell down the stairs,” the old man told the staff at casualty, and because Doug wouldn't say anything to the contrary the old devil was believed. Doug was seventeen at the time, and he carried on pissing the bed until he was twenty one when his father was stabbed to death during a brawl outside one of the local pubs after an all-night drinking session, at which point the nocturnal piddling miraculously stopped and the entire family breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Doug was still doing paper rounds until he was twenty three because he couldn't find any other employment, and he invariably ran his rounds full pelt riding an imaginary horse, slapping his thigh in unbridled joy and shouting 'Yeee-haar!” at the top of his voice, except when he was being stoned or chased by gangs of yobs. He grew out of that habit when his cousin set him on as a general labourer in a local factory where he was a manager, but factory life, especially in an all-male environment, is just as brutal as the playground; the piss-taking was worse than ever, but at least he learned to fend for himself a little more efficiently.

“Wooar, look at the soft cunt!” a scrawny girl no older than fourteen, her neck a ruin of livid purple love-bites said to her bloated boyfriend, who looked a good fifteen years older. “It's the Rhinestone Gayboy! You look just like Clint fuckin' Eastwood, mate. 'Ow about takin' me for a ride on the back of yer 'oss an' tekkin' me to yer little 'ouse on the prairie for a good seein' to?”

“Shhh! You 'ave to be careful wiv nutters like'im, 'e'd stick a knife through yer 'eart without battin' an eyelid,” her boyfriend whispered.

“Fuck off,” Doug muttered. “Slag,” he desperately wanted to add, but he only dared open his mouth because the man looked softer than he was and he was sure he could outrun him if he wasn't.

“You bloody idiot,” an old woman muttered as Doug passed her, but he did his best to ignore her as his mother was still alive and despite the old bird's feebleness she ruled with an iron fist, so he was particularly wary of old women. “You want lockin' up. On second thoughts you should 'ave been drowned at birth, you fuckin' retard - I don't know what this country's comin' to.”