Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West(10)

“The Black Shit.” Edward nodded grimly.

“The Black Shit!” Albert repeated. “The latest offering in the frontier’s Disease of the Month Club.”

“I heard it started with a Canadian railroad conductor,” Ruth chimed in.

Albert plowed ahead. “And even if you survive all those things, you know what’ll kill you? The fucking doctor. I had a cold a couple years ago, I went in there, and he says, ‘Oh, you need an ear nail.’ A nail. In my fucking ear. That’s modern medicine. ‘Hey, doc, I have a fever of 102.’ ‘Oh, you need a donkey-kickin’.’ You know what else? Our pastor has shot two people. Our pastor.”

“Really?” said Ruth.

“Yep. Shot a guy in a duel and then went and tracked down the guy’s teenage son and shot him too, ’cause he was afraid the kid would come after him outta revenge.”

“Wait, how do you know that?” asked Edward skeptically.

“Because he did a whole fucking sermon about it!! A lesson about ‘seeing things through’! Oh, by the way, here’s something else: Look behind you. See those guys at that table over there? The guys who work in the silver mines? See what they’re eating? Ribs doused in hot sauce.”

Sure enough, three filthy-looking miners sat at a nearby table, messily gnawing away at their meals.

“That’s all they eat. Did you know that?” said Albert. “They eat hot, spicy foods for every meal of the day ’cause their palates are completely dulled and desensitized from inhaling poison gas twelve hours a day. All they can taste are hot, spicy foods. You know what that kinda diet does to your guts? Let me tell you: constipation, cramps, dyspepsia, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, liver disease, kidney disease, bowel inflammation—they die from their own farts! Oh, and speaking of death, if you wanna see even more of that, you don’t need to sit inside the saloon waiting for the inevitable shoot-out, fistfight, or full-on brawl that breaks out once a night and usually results in several deaths. No, all we need to do is step outside the front door right now!”

Strutting tipsily, Albert did his best to cut a winding pathway through the crowd, leading Ruth and Edward out through the saloon’s batwing doors. He pointed across the street at a slumped-over form that lay in an alleyway next to the general store. “That is our mayor,” he declared with pomp. “He is dead. He has been lying there dead for three days, and no one has done a thing: not moved him, not looked into his death, not even replaced him with a temporary appointee. For the last three days, our mayor, the highest-ranking official in our town, has been a dead guy.”

Albert’s eyes suddenly widened. “Oh! Oh, look! Look at that! The coyotes are dragging the body away!” Sure enough, two mangy-looking desert coyotes were tugging at the mayor’s limbs with their jaws, slowly but effectively dragging the corpse farther back into the shadows of the alley.

“That is so adorable!” Albert shouted with a big drunken grin. “They’re gonna feed his dick to their young! Bye, Mr. Mayor! Have fun becoming dog poop!” With that, Albert whirled around and stumbled through the batwing doors, making his way back to his chair with a red face and a spent soul.

“That, my friends, is the West!” he exclaimed, as Ruth and Edward joined him at the table, dutifully keeping up. “A shitty, disgusting cesspool of awfulness and despair. Fuck all of it.”

“Why don’t you shut up,” said a sweaty cowboy at the next table, clearly tired of hearing the sheep farmer complain.

“You shut up,” said Albert reflexively.


Twenty minutes afterward, Ruth was still dabbing at the sizable gash on Albert’s forehead, which he had gotten when the sweaty cowboy flung him through the saloon window. Edward watched with concern as she dipped the already bloodied cloth back into the horse trough to moisten it. As for Albert, he was currently slumped forward in a most undignified fashion, allowing the massive amount of whiskey he’d consumed in the past ten minutes to do its holy work of spreading throughout his bloodstream and obliterating both the physical and emotional pain of the day.

“Stop it,” he slurred as he swatted at Ruth’s hand, knocking the reddened cloth to the dusty ground.

“Okay,” she said, “But, you know, you should probably have Doctor Harper take a look at that.”

Albert glared at her with undisguised derision. “Ruth, you’re very sweet, but have you been listening to a goddamn thing I’ve been saying? You know what Doctor Harper’ll say? He’ll say, ‘Oh, let me put a blue jay on that to peck out the blood.’ Hey, wait, y’know what? You guys should have a drink with me. Let’s all have a drink,” he said, his bearing now flush with the confidence of a shit-faced man.