I have been corresponding for a while with Todd.  We chat about movies and writing.  I should only wish I was in his league as a writer--maybe one day if I find a genie who'll grant me some wishes, I will be closer.

Todd Moore is finishing "Dreaming of Billy The Kid", but why wait for it to be published?  Why not review what has been made public now, and show you a sample?  Why not whet your appetites?

The excerpts below have been posted on the site Todd and his son run, St. Vitus Press and Poetry Review.  They are posted here with Todd's permission.

On first reading the excerpts, I kept thinking: Allain Robbe-Grillet meets Sam Peckinpah. 

Robbe-Grillet, if you are not familiar with his work (and you should be!) wrote a few novels that I grew up with.  He has also written screenplays ("Last Year at Marienbad") and has written and directed films.  Robbe-Grillet likes to play with time, space and your head.  What is reality, what is fiction?  He is a master at taking the traditional narrative structure and going for a ride with it.  Instead of getting on that ol' narrative railroad train, going down a straight track from Point A to Point B, you're on a roller coaster.

If there is a criticism of Robbe-Grillet's novels I could suggest, it's that at times they feel too divorced from reality, too artificial--too inwardly literary.  You always know you are reading a novel--mind, i have only read the translated versions from the original French.  But they are defnitely "literary".

Now you're ready for Todd Moore.

Like Robbe-Grillet, he plays with time and space in his narrative structure.  But this ain't a simple roller coaster ride--you're about to blast off into space, into unchartered territory.  Welcome to zero gravity.  Unlike Robbe-Grillet, Moore's "Dreaming of Billy The Kid" is not at all "literary" or "inward."  It is firmly rooted in reality--yet that reality is part fiction. 

Moore takes the traditional Western as a starting point, mixes in real life history, adds modern day versions of the West, stirs in movie and factual references, and makes it all his own.  What a boiling stew!  There ain't nothing like "Dreaming of Billy The Kid" out there. 

This is the real thing--Outsider Writing at its best.

The writing is starkly vivid.  Direct.  Not a single wasted word.  The images are boldly created.  Poetry as prose?  Sure.  The writing has a solid rhythm, effortlessly moving from fact to fiction, past to present,  scene to bloody scene, before you even realize what he's done.  He is always a few steps ahead of the reader--in the best possible way.  This is both challenging and accessible.  You'll have to think, but you'll enjoy it.

But see for yourself.  There may be a glitch or two in the spacing, by the way.  You can see the original at the St. Vitus Press and Poetry Review site, on page six:

Excerpt from Todd Moore’s upcoming book, “Dreaming of Billy The Kid”

       A machine gun has no conscience.  All it has is speed and velocity. Comments made by an anonymous American arms dealer to Pancho Villa.  Villa is reported to have grabbed his crotch and smiled.
       When you are on the trigger end of a machine gun firing tracers, it’s like death is blinking making all those killer lights.  James Dickey to Sam Peckinpah from an unfinished film script.
       I’d like to see somebody try to outshoot a machine gun.  Emilio Fernandez to Peckinpah, from the unfinished film script.
       Holden leaned over to Peckinpah during the opening shootout on the streets on Parras and whispered, I know what you are doing.  Peckinpah looked over his shoulder at Holden and said, What am I doing?  Holden smiled through his mustache and said, You’re trying to make a movie that has the feel of a machine gun.
       We lined them up along the railroad tracks and shot them down one, two, three, just like that and the whole time I could hear somebody laughing but couldn’t figure out who it was until later and then I realized that the laughter was coming from somewhere way deep inside me.  Story an American mercenary told to the trigger finger man in a Juarez cantina.
       After the accident de Angulo never slept through a whole night again.  It would begin with the sound of the water because he couldn’t quite remember the sound of the crash.         The feel of it was darkness colliding with darkness.  After that it was the water.  The incessant water.  But not pounding.  Just rushing around and past him.  He couldn’t lift himself up or slide himself out because mangled car metal was pinning him to the corpse of his son who lay beneath him staring up.  It was the staring part that felt so funny.  And, the way that Alvar’s mouth looked.  It was cocked wide open, the lips horribly parted, the teeth showing.  De Angulo couldn’t help but look down and each time he did he gazed into those dead eyes that the water was glazing and into that wrecked mouth that couldn’t be closed.  What bothered de Angulo the most was that it looked like his son was trying to scream his way out of death but was unable to produce even a whisper.  
       During this whole time de Angulo was passing into and out of consciousness and whenever he came to he would say what to his son as though the boy had said something that he had just missed.  De Angulo was unable to separate the moments of lucidity and dream.  He knew he was teetering on the edge of something.  There were moments when coyote would appear on the creek bank and stare at him.  It took every ounce of strength de Angulo had to look in coyote’s direction.  Once he thought he saw coyote sitting calmly on a thick carpet of bones.  
 
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       I have been looking for you among the burnt up houses of time.  A note in Pat Garrett’s hand found in his pocket at the time of his murder.
       The Kid asked the stranger what he had all wrapped up in a piece of ripped bed sheet and set out on the bar.  The bartender also walked over curious about what was hidden in that old scrap of cloth.  The stranger said It is the wonder of wonders, a miracle if there ever was one.  
        The Kid said, Well, then, don’t keep us in suspense.  The bartender said, I’ll stand you to a free one if you show us, so the stranger carefully unwrapped the old rag and spread the ends out flat.  There at the center of the cloth was a man’s hand.  The place where it had been cut away from the wrist had grown completely over and instead of being dead and lifeless, the hand was completely alive with a pulse and everything.  Go ahead and touch it, the stranger said.  The Kid used an empty shot glass to poke it.                  When he did, the fingers moved.  The most interesting thing of all was that the trigger finger immediately went into its gunfighter curl.  
        The bartender said, Well, I’ll be damned.  The Kid smiled around all of his teeth and said, Give it a gun and see what it’ll do.  The stranger said, I’m gonna do better than that.          I hear there’s a hand just like this one in Mexico City.  I’m gonna go down there and see if I can arrange a gunfight for serious money between the two.  Winner take all.
       While I was on horseback on the American side of the Rio Grande, a Mexican bandit on the other side of the river took three shots at me with his carbine and missed.  My horse being used to gunfire stood very still.  I eased my Winchester out of its scabbard, took careful aim and hit the man in the head.  The bullet knocked him off the back of his horse.   Captain Travis Woodull, Texas Rangers, 1918.
       James Ryan Morris, an old Venice Beat poet, always took his pistol with him when he went to read poetry.  John Macker, Anasazi Winery, Placitas, New Mexico.
       Mid September, 1885, William Bennett, a Colorado gambler who had it in for Lou Rickabaugh went to his room in the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Tucson, banged on the door, and challenged him to a gunfight.  Rickabaugh declined and told Bennett to go home and sober up.  Bennett replied that if he didn’t show himself in the hall in exactly one minute he would kick the door down and enter shooting.  Rickabaugh took the Colt 41 out of his coat, checked the chambers, then stepped out a side door leading into the hall.          When Bennett turned it was too late.  Rickabaugh fired low just to wing him.  The slug hit Bennett in the left knee.  But, instead of exiting, the lead travelled up the leg and severed the femoral artery.  Bennett died on the way to the hospital.  Based on information from TOMBSTONE’S TREASURE: SILVER MINES AND GOLDEN SALOONS, Sherry Monahan, University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
       Had the trigger finger gold plated and then attached to a black cat’s eye pearl on his watch chain.  Remark attributed to Luke Short about Doc Holliday.

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        Nobody mourned when Al McAllister gunned down Cactus Kelly aka One Armed Kelly in the Oriental Saloon.  McAllister, a Galeyville butcher, then whipped out a large bowie knife and claimed Kelly’s trigger finger with one quick chop of the blade.  From the John Ridgway’s unpublished memoir, BLOOD ON THE TRAIL.
        The bandits had us pinned down under a withering fire.  Finally out of frustration Jack Dawson stood up and began walking toward them.  Now, it is a well known fact among border marauders and lawmen alike that Mexican bandits have a bad reputation for poor marksmanship.  Dawson was counting on that was he walked.  At last, he pretended to be hit and went down.  The bandits waited a few seconds and then stood up yelling.  At that moment Dawson and the rest of us opened up on them.  We killed eight and the rest escaped under the cover of brush and boulders.  The bandit’s trigger finger that I sliced off put a bloody stain the shirt pocket where I carry my Bull Durham sack.  The shadow of that stain is still there.  From BUSHWHACK COUNTRY, Jerome Langen, Hanging Tree Press.
        Old Man Clanton smiled at Billy and said, Lets see what your draw looks like.  Ike was reeling drunkenly in the doorway when he said, Doncha wanna see what my draw looks like?  The Old man replied, I don’t believe you have the sand to draw on a man.  It’s Billy I am putting my hope in.  Billy got up from the plain wooden table and stood at the center of the room.  Okay, the Old man said, You look good, you look awful good wearing that pistol.  Now, draw on me as though you are about to kill me.  Billy blinked and said, I can’t do that, you’re my paw.  I couldn’t no more draw on you as I could tell you a lie.  The Old man slowly limped over to Billy and slapped his face on both sides so hard it sounded like a whip on a horse’s flank.  
        Now, you will draw boy.  Before the Old man could get the word boy out of his mouth, Billy’s Colt revolver was stuck against the Old man’s belly.  The Old Man laughed so hard the trigger finger cross hanging around his neck was shaking.  He glanced over at Ike and said, You ever seen anything so fast?  Ike said, Frank McLaury maybe.  Yeah, the Old Man said. Maybe.  So, Billy.  Would you have killed your Old Man?  Billy stepped back, holstered the Colt and said, I never kill blood.  The Old Man punched Billy gently in the right arm and said, That’s my boy.
        When Marshal T. H. Swann buffaloed Flashy Jim Wilson the pistol went off and the slug ricocheted off a steel post and then sliced off Big Mike’s trigger finger.  Big Mike drew his pistol left handed and in spite of the intense pain shot the Marshal in the forehead.  The Marshal fell sideways and his eyes froze on a scorpion’s tail.
        Warren Oates speared the dead scorpion with a jack knife, stuffed it into a manila envelope, sealed it shut, addressed it to Sam Peckinpah, and left it on the director’s chair.  When Peckinpah returned to his chair, he noticed the envelope, picked it up, hefted it, then tore off the top and emptied the dead scorpion out into the dirt.  Then he glanced over at Oates, saw the big smile, and said, Better check your bed, tonight, amigo.

                                                                    87

        The name of the game was trick shooting the scorpion and the Kid challenged Garrett for a go.  The rule was you had to nail three scorpions in the air, back to back to be considered worthy of being called a gunfighter.  The man throwing the scorpion would tease one onto the flat side of a stick or board and on the count of three toss it up as high as he could.  Then the shooter had to slice it in half with a bullet.  Garrett went first and got all three but the last one he only really clipped a leg.  Then the Kid went and cleanly shot all three in half.  The bet was five dollars and Garrett slipped the Kid the gold piece, then said, Shooting scorpions is a whole lot different from shooting men.  The Kid smiled and said, Maybe.  Only some scorpions have bigger stingers than others.  Just like some men.
        Wyatt Earp bit the end off a cigar, spit it on the floor, and said, Why is it Doc that you wound some men and kill others?  Like Johnny Tyler, Doc said.  Yeah, like Tyler.  Some nights I’m in a killing mood.  Others I just like to play with the meat.
        The gunfight erupted near the front of the cantina before anyone could run or duck.  Both men stood up at the table and pulled out their pistols.  Artaud, who was sitting in the dark near the back, could only sit and watch.  They may have said something in Spanish to each other but if they did he didn’t understand it.  The sounds they made were more like growling.  Then they fired point blank at each other, the bullets putting a fine spray of blood in both directions.  
        One of them fell across the table.  The other went backwards into another table spilling the drinks on that one.  A woman screamed and someone else was crying.  One of the waiters came over to Artaud’s table and said something he didn’t understand.                  Artaud took it as an apology and the waiter poured him a complimentary glass of wine.
        The camera knows the look, Peckinpah said, glancing down at the ground.  What look is that Robert Ryan asked, getting that shaky sound to his voice.  It’s the look goddamit, you know the look.  Like, Ryan asked.  Peckinpah took a breath and glanced up.  The look where you are so fucking tired of getting the shit kicked out of you that you can’t take it anymore.  The look where every inch of you wants to die and ever inch of you wants to live both at the same time.  The look where you could kill that railroad boss who has been dogging you.  The look where you are drowning in exhaustion and fury.  The look where someone has just chopped off your fingers but you are still ready to fight.              Can you give me that look?  Ryan stepped back and opened his fists.  Then he said, I have invented that look.  Scene from an unfinished film script.
        In the Senate Saloon Johnny Winslow kept a big jug of scorpions out on the bar.  The first thing most people would do was walk up and put their hands on the glass.  A patron once asked Winslow why he liked scorpions so much and his reply was, I love the sense of danger that sleeps in their tails.  Lou Rickabaugh to One Eyed Jack Smith.



                                                                    88

        Peckinpah walked in front of Ben Johnson and said, You wanna know why I love machine guns so much?  Johnson back up a step and said, Yeah.  Peckinpah smiled and said, It’s because they just keep shooting.
        Arkansa Stick Johnson went down with slug through the lung.  He was firing twin 45’s point blank at the dirt.  Harley Owens, Deputy U. S. Marshal.
        Trains stopped for them.
        Banks opened their vaults for them.
        Only the moon understood their pistolero hands.  Blurb from the cover of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, William Goldman, Bantam Books.
        I tried writing a western once.  Hell, I tried writing a western several times, always a bust.  I ached to write another SHANE, or HIGH NOON or UNFORGIVEN or LONESOME DOVE or BLOOD MERIDIAN or THE KID.  Anything just to get what I had inside of me right.  And, you know what.  I failed every goddam time.  The story always worked fine in my head but when I got it out on paper it was a complete fucking disaster.  Sometimes the main character just came apart right in front of me or the plot took a wide left turn and then kept going, or somewhere around page one hundred I realized it was a total mess and gave up.  You can lie to your bartender, you can like while you are trying to impress your friends about being a big shot writer, you can lie to whoever you are with at the moment, but you can’t like to the mirror.  Even when you pose with a gun.
        I have this little theory that The Trigger Finger Man was just possibly the original inspiration for Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden.  Think about it for a minute.  Holden is the archetypal figure for evil in BLOOD MERIDIAN.  He’s seven feet tall, an albino, monstrous and garish in the way he’s presented.  In other words, he’s huge, lethal, and fleshy.  On the other hand, when you consider The Trigger Finger Man, he’s a slippery customer.  Nobody knows exactly what he looks like.  Some say he’s tall, others say he’s short.  There is even one story out there that he has an extra index finger on both hands.          So, nobody knows exactly what he looks like.  He’s everyman kicked a rung higher and he’s also evil.  
       He’s a trickster, a shapeshifter, a collector of gunfighter fingers.  My guess is when McCarthy decided to make Holden this massive albino, he was recoiling from the ubiquitous myth of Trigger Finger.  But, see, where they both converge, where they meet subversively is in the imagery of the riven body parts.  Trigger finger wears a necklace of dead men’s fingers.  
        Holden decorates a scrub desert tree with the bodies of butchered children.  This is where the trickster image comes together.  I think I read a poem by Jaime de Angulo somewhere once about a magic tree covered with human eyes.  And, if you got close to it and any one of those eyes just barely got a glimpse of you, when you died, your eye would be condemned to rest at the end of one of those branches.
        From a conversation I had with Dave Hackbarth during lunch.


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       In those days everyone fancied himself dangerous with a gun but when the Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday came to Albuquerque to kick back, everyone I knew stayed out of their way.  
        The word on Wyatt was he was colder than ice.  You couldn’t spook him.  And, Doc, well, Doc was just plain crazy.  It reminded me of all that talk going around about the Kid.          I knew a couple of guys who wanted to try the Kid but when they saw him, they changed their minds and when I asked one why he didn’t call the Kid out, he shrugged and said, I couldn’t look into his eyes.  I remember once walking down to the Plaza while Doc was standing there in the bitterly cold wind coming off the Sandias and when I passed him he gave me such a look I had to turn away.  Some guys just have murder coming out of them.  Murder is all.
       We tracked Cowboy Jim Trayner down a blind canyon and when he realized he couldn’t escape he started howling like a kicked dog.  Wyatt rode in alone to talk to him.  i held back a little ways looking for anyone up in the crags.  Trayner walked out of some rocks with his hands up.  He was still talking funny like a dead man might talk after he’d been shot up good.  
        All sounds that didn’t make any sense.  But he didn’t fool Wyatt who just kept riding in.  When the two got close enough Trayner stopped talking crazy and produced a pistol from behind his neck and Wyatt fired three shots.  All in the forehead and eyes.  Then he dismounted, unbuckled Trayner’s holster and put it around him upside down.  He glanced over at me and said, My signature.  To let everyone know I killed this man.                  Turkey Creek Jack Johnson to Bat Masterson.

Last update : 31-03-2007 21:28

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