In EAST OF THE BORDER, Johnny D. Boggs has delivered one of the funniest novels I’ve read since Adam was a pup, and yes, it is a legitimate Western. Well, sort of a legitimate Western.
It’s the story of the year Buffalo Bill Cody, Texas Jack Omohundro and Wild Bill Hickok traveled together in a stage play that seemed to have changed its name more often than its stars changed their underwear. Apparently, it didn’t matter what the damn thing was called, because none of the three leads – with the frequent exception of Texas Jack – bothered to learn their lines, so it was a different play at every performance anyway.
By the early 1870s, all three men were on the verge of becoming living legends – especially Cody and Hickok, who were the heroes of dime novels and the envy of every excited schoolboy and adult nerd in the country. Audiences were thrilled to pay their 25 cents to watch their idols declaim grotesquely melodramatic claptrap on stage, rescue maidens, bring villains to justice and shoot the shit out of low-paid extras – “supes,” as in supernumeraries.
Boggs has a lot of fun with Hickok, who felt the entire enterprise was a goof and got a kick out of standing next to “dead Indians” and firing his pistol close to the exposed skin of their lower limbs. The blank cartridge would explode, shooting out a trace of burning powder and scorching the poor supe’s leg, which frequently resulted in the dead Indian leaping to his feet and howling with pain, only to be killed again.
Audiences loved it and yelled for multiple slaughters of the same Indians. The actors would just as often drop completely out of character to talk to each other and the spectators as themselves, without the exaggerated histrionics of the script. One night when he was expecting to take a swing of whiskey as part of the show, Hickok took a gulp of something tamer and hollered out, “Cold tea won’t do it.” The ad lib got such a large laugh, it immediately went into the play.
These shenanigans made the production a sort of premodern/postmodern extravaganza and a big-time cash cow. Cody and Omohundro enjoyed the work, but as Boggs has it, Hickok could never get over the idea that audiences were laughing at him and not with him.
We get to know the men from three angles. Each narrates about one-third of the book, so we see them as they saw themselves. This means that we see each of them from the point of view of the other two. Hickok comes across as loping through show business as he did everything else: with a rough sense of humor, a good heart and an understanding that nothing in life makes a whole lot of sense. Cody wants a quiet family life, but he and his wife drive each other crazy, and actresses are just so damn cute. Texas Jack wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his life on stage, and even marries the troupe’s star dancer.
The book progresses through a series of onstage antics and catastrophes. Hickok wants to quit and return to the west but he gave Cody his word he’d stick it out for a year and intends to do it. Cody would like to fire Hickok as a bad influence but he gave his word to employ his old friend for a full season on the boards. Texas Jack just wants to act but all too often finds himself in the role of referee.
Boggs’ dialogue is the real deal, and even without ever having heard the voices of these men, you can hear the voices of these men. Here’s Buffalo Bill explaining to Wild Bill and Texas Jack the innocence of his carriage ride with one of the actresses in the show – a ride observed by his wife: “’We didn’t do a thing. Just rode around town to a vacant lot, drank some whiskey and then she read some sonnets, and afterward we recited scenes from MACBETH. … That’s the awfulest thing. I mean, I know I can be a handful, but as God is my witness, boys, I ain’t never been unfaithful to my wife.’ I killed my drink, and thought to add, ‘While she traveled with me.’”
This is one of the good ones, and you won’t be able to read it without cursing fate that you weren’t born early enough to have seen a performance of “Buffalo Bill: King of the Border Scouts.” But you wouldn’t have wanted to have played one of the Indians. –Doug Bentin
Related posts:
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }