Stagger Lee
flash fiction
I’m a drunk, I know it. Mostly, a harmless haint among the whiskey brawlers in New Orleans, or anyplace there’s bars. Once I seen a man kill another over a cowboy hat and a card game. Cards or bones or just plain, ‘I betcha,’ I forget. This man, a bad man, Stagger Lee, held a .44 on Billy, a dandy daddy who cheated Stag out of his big, brown, brand-new chapeaux. Well, Stag fired and Billy went down and the mirror behind the bar exploded. And, Jesus, I went deaf. Somebody dragged Billy out to the street. Stag put a boot on Billy’s chest and went on laughing, then bent and took back the hat, took it right off Billy’s cold, moldering head. When the cops asked me what I seen, I said, of course, that the mirror was broke. So what could I see? Nothing? they said. That’s right nothing. Nothing. I swear to God I saw nothing.