The Harder They Come by Michael Thelwell

Author:Michael Thelwell [Thelwell, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Drama, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780802131386
Google: qsRZYM9d2_wC
Amazon: 0802131387
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 1979-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

SALT LAKE CITY RANCH

Death before Dishonor

BOOT HILL 5 YARDS

"Is our ranch dis," Bogart explained. "We control on yah, is yahso we groun'."

"It arright." Ivan nodded approvingly.

"Dis here is breddah Rhygin - 'im a go groun' wid we." That was his introduction. There were a few appraising glances, some nods and murmurs of welcome, that was all it took and Ivan was a member. They produced a cutchie pipe and sat around the fire on worn seats scavenged from old cars.

In the light of the fire Ivan recognized most of the faces and, as talk flowed easily back and forth, soon had names to associate with them. There were about ten, all about his own age. None - with the exception of Black LeRoy, to differentiate him from Coolie LeRoy who ran with the Dodge City Ranch -seemed to answer to the names their mommas gave them. They answered to the tough-sounding two syllable surnames that were the stock in trade of Hollywood press agents - names of consequence and with the right resonances that could be spat out with sharp, dangerous inflections: Bendix, Cagney, Bogart, Widmark. In those cases where the bearer of the name was bad enough, but the surname by itself was too common or in some way lacking in poetic and dramatic menace, then the full name was used for emphasis, so that Ivan also met that first night Edward G. Robinson, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. It was a heady experience around that smoky fire on the edge of the gulley - to walk with kings ...

Their identification was with the actors, not with the characters they played who were obviously ephemeral and transitory. It was the ability of the actors that made the characters bad and which endured, so that arguments took place over whether Bogart was badder than Widmark. A standing joke was about two country boys who had taken the names Jesse James and General Custer, failing to see the distinction between the real and the imaginary. These choices provoked so much scorn and derision that the boys quickly abandoned the "dead man name dem."

It was here that Ivan's education truly began. They lounged around the fire and talked knowingly and with a casual toughness and machismo of language that matched their noms de guerre. Their style was aggressive, their wit cynical, their bravado endless. With capricious dexterity they flashed their okapis, the ubiquitous, cheap German-made clasp knives known in the press as rachet knives, the weapon of choice of the gulleys and slums.

Honor demanded that even the slightest gesture of challenge, the faintest nuance of disrespect had to be met. But if you were fast enough with the humpbacked evil-looking blade, if you could flourish it with the stylish grace of a gunslinger twirling his six gun, that was frequently enough and the actual cutting was unnecessary, was even regarded as a sign of oafishness. But that was before the legendary, dazzlingly fast Peter Lorre was cut down in the middle of

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