Creation Ranch 9

Chapter : 9  Hap

 

 

Hapner, Hap for short, was taken with Lois the first time he saw her.  But the last time he saw her he was left without her and though he didn’t really love her any longer he still didn’t want it to be the last time he was ever to see her, not knowing what had happened to her or why; such events if he was to pose as her legal husband might prove quite lucrative.   And, if Hap loved anything it was money when it came in bunches, especially, in amounts he had difficulty counting.

Hap’s first name was not Hap, and not Happy, either, as a lot of people assumed for the boy seemed so filled with fun and excitement when he was young.  The only person that ever called Hap by his first name was his dad, who was a gambler Hap found one day when he was twelve years old sleeping in the arms of a man named Fancy D. Canter, a perfume salesman from some place other than Ghalb where he found them, drunk as two pigs that had gotten into the corn mash.  In fact that was how he found Uriah Hapner from the sounds of the squeals he let out in the ware wagon that had Fancy’s name written all over it in many loud colors, one of them a bright pink that could be seen farther than the eye could see.

However, when Uriah, Hap’s daddy, saw the boy standing there in the back of the wagon, he wasn’t whooping his voice any longer.  He looked silently at the boy who could not believe such a thing of his own pa.  How could two men do such things, but especially, how could two men do such things when one of them was your pa?

Hap took the gun out of his daddy’s pants that hung next to him on a nail in the wagon frame, and pointed it at his own pa.

Uriah Hapner, asked, “Now, now what you going to do with that six-shooter, boy?”

“I’m going to fire the second shot heard ’round the world if you don’t give me what’s left of my share of the winnings from that poker game tonight.”

“Which is?” Uriah said, standing now, naked, but in the dark of the wagon it was difficult to know that, while Fancy was holding the quilt they had been somewhat under before, clutched up in front of his chest like a silly woman.

Uriah made a lunge for the kid and the kid came down as hard as he could on Daddy’s head with the gun, and then had to crawl out from under him, for the gambler was not playing a winning hand I suppose if he had realized how many men Hap had cold cocked for him when he’d cheated them and they never expected any kind of really useful trouble from the kid who always roamed the room, getting into things that required his dad to look at the boy, call him down for it, and unbeknownst to fellow gamblers have the boy flash his daddy a signal or two as to how to bid in a key situation; the other gambler’s hand in full view of the boy but not his daddy.

He picked his daddy’s pockets and came up with much more than his share, then he greedily turned on the other man in the room, Fancy D. Canter, who knew he was not just going to rob his daddy and take off.  But he, Mr. Canter, was not a fighter but a lover, of sorts, and so he just pointed in the way of a fancy vase looking thing that held a single wilted pink and white peony with a lot of bills wrapped around the stem of it, which Hap quickly made a part of his possessions also.  Then as he flung open the curtains at the back of the wagon light fell on a loose floorboard that exposed a large amount of money.

The boy smiled and holding the gun, the money and his nerve told Fancy, “Get over here and dig that booty out of there too,” and Fancy not wanting to die and seeing the kid had in his possession a deadly weapon, he complied but just at the end of that, attempted to trip Hap who was stashing the cash and coins all over him.  Hap did trip but, he by accident, or by the Lord Deag, came down on Fancy’s forehead just at the right time, and Fancy joined Hap’s pa but in a different pile than the twisted mess they had been in when Hap had found them there.

Well, it was different this time for it had always been a familiar ruse in times past with wealthy women and Hap’s dad, who had always survived and everything was kept quiet at least while Hap and Uriah and his mom skipped town never to return; without cause that is. 

Fancy was not a woman.  There had been no ruse set up between Uriah and Hap this time.  And, Hap had hit his father a little harder or in perhaps just the right place; he never recovered.