The Jism Trail (cont'd)

The Jism Trail (cont'd)

       by Dan Gerous

the trail leads home

the trail leads home

i will no longer roam

despite the drive

despite the drive

i'm glad to be alive

hell's gate is past

hell's gate is past

i'll see my home at last

i'll never leave

i'll never leave

my wife again to grieve

she'd love to leave

she'd love to leave

her man at home to grieve

. . . frontiersman who knows little of the culture to which he comes and carries with him a harpoon instead of rifle. Barbed wire indicates unwanted technological advancement into a peaceful world better experienced in its sparsely-populated, free-range-animal-and-human thereness.

       Laconic surpasses garrulous, with the proof of that being the hero drawing his gun regularly on the talkative one who, as a consequence of speaking when he should have been shooting, finds himself bloody in the dust (with a chicken pulling at a vein in his neck) instead of standing over the one there in that condition. Heart attacks and cancer never plague cowboy mankind and come into their force in those who mistake the city for a place to live. Children do not speak, and seldom are seen except when happened upon dead and mutilated by the rampage of outlaw band or Indian war party. The smoking remains of a log cabin and the knowledge that the loved little ones lie there in the charred remains, with burned gingham dresses and singed slingshots, tell the reader all he ever will or needs to know about their silent existence. Adults appear complete with girlish figures already formed and manly muscles firm and broad, indicative of a commendable potential for the strength under fire soon to be required of them.

       Wesley became conscious, too, of the scarcity of money in the world, how many no-good patriarchs had it at their disposal, and how some few generous patriarchs had it in banks in large cities and with which they had purchased great tracks of fine ranchland. Most members of the roving society, in contrast, lived from hand to mouth, owning a six-gun, a single set of clothing, and enough coin to purchase a satchel of tobacco to have to hand

       Music came by way of a single instrument in the hands of a shortsighted farmhand and then it would be a guitar or a harmonica. Occasionally a piano graced a wealthy, good rancher's parlor, but these were only said to have been played at a time when no member of the cast of domestic workers, busy at any given hour, were present to have heard it. Organs, mentioned once or twice, belonged in churches, but since church-going remained a staple in the lives of all, yet never actually saw itself in the act of happening, they played insignificant roles in the lives of the ones one intended to be.

       When Wesley died the Wild West died, too. Guitars are now played by so many. I, myself, belong to a bluegrass quartet and play a wonderful vintage C. F. Martin D28. Ladies smoke cigarettes almost more regularly than men do. Children call out their needs into the middle of adult conversation. The lonely individual earns our pity rather than our respect. Long guns no longer stand at the ready in glass cupboards. Indians, First Nations Canadians, pick wild rice, perform marriage ceremonies, act as legal judges, and in all ways participate in the promotion of social groups. Dresses now seldom contain any gingham. Tobacco pipe smokers have left the country. Wickedness in patriarchs can be found or seen hardly at all. No one reads Zane Grey. It has been years since I considered cracking a Western mysrlf.