Knack Knack

By Douglas P. Krimmel

Partial truth is what enemy

would use to destroy you.

Pure truth does not come

from the hearts of men.

But from the words of God.

Knack Knack has lived forever. Nobody knows where he came from or if he is even born from mankind. Some say that he is the one warrior that stuck the side of the Creator himself, damned to walk the earth for all of time. In reality, he is just a reluctant hero trying to do the next right thing.

The year is 1843, and gold was on the rise. The Bonnie Loon is one such place that houses many filled with greed. The town of sin and gin. Well-Dressed Dan is one person in particular who is as ruthless as they come, but Knack Knack is no normal human, and when he shows up in town, things get complicated for Dan. What was supposed to be an easy voyage for gold turns into something much more dangerous than what Knack Knack had bargained for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781662402777

Book preview

Chapter 1

Knack Knack the Eskimo and the Three-Legged Dog

Young warriors, if they are fortunate

enough to survive,

Become old poets.

The braver the warrior,

The more whimsical the old poet.

This sounds sweet

Because it is the truth

Partly

Many things sound sweet

For they hold truth.

Partial truth is what enemy

Would use to destroy you.

Pure truth does not come

from the hearts of men.

But from the words of God.

—Knack Knack, 1843

Nobody knows where the Knack first came from. Or how old he was or if he’s even a real tribal Eskimo or if he was ever born of mankind. Some say he’s a child of the tundra itself. I believe he’s the one soldier who stuck the side of the Creator himself. Now he’s not wanted by the devil or the Lord both. He’s just plain ornery and damned to walk on this earth for all time. A reluctant hero just trying to do the next right thing.

Now Knacky’s not the giant that the legend would like us to believe but pretty damn big for people around these parts. He had long, black, and gray hair to his chest that he braided with shark’s teeth to keep out of his blue glass eye and his other red eye. On top of his head, he had an old cowhide bull rider’s hat pulled down tight for the wind. He wore a grizzly bear coat (part of his diet) and seal skin boots.

The Eskimo walked everywhere he went in order not to be a burden to any beast. Nor did he own any animal or lean-to, igloo, or home. For the earth, sky, and stars belonged to him. When he wanted to sleep (if he does sleep), he simply sat in the snow. When he sat, the blue glass eye never closes. One man I knew snuck up on the Knack while he sat (I think the Knack let him) and looked into that glass eye. What he saw I can’t say, we can’t understand him for that stutter. He drank an awful lot now too.

There’s this dog that liked to come around from time to time to spend time around the great hunter. Maybe he just liked the scent of dead snow rabbits (Knack liked a few for his breakfast) or because sometimes he would get a large handful of venison jerky or maybe him and the man had a lot in common. See, some people think the dog is psychic because he seemed to stare off into nowhere, but I think he’s of a pointing breed, and since he’s missing that leg, well, he’s just pointing is all.

On the day of a blinding northern blizzard, one could not see as far as the length of one’s arm. Knack Knack sat in the center of the worst of it, the three-legged dog close by. The man lifted his brown weathered face, he couldn’t see it but he could sense it, the dog could smell it. By the time the Knack lifted his cracking and heavy bones from the frozen ground, all he had to do was to reach out his thick and calloused hand to have a warm and wet and alive white dove dropped into it from the mouth of the dog. The bird flew off, leaving a folded piece of paper in hand.

The large man read:

I have a great need

Of a great hand

Remember our creed

Son of the land

The crimson one has come

Well-Dressed Dan

Is in his room

In the saloon of

The Bonnie Loon

Come south, come south

—Mustache Bob

Knack Knack faced toward the south and groaned. The three-legged dog faced toward the south and growled. They both started out together.

Chapter 2

Well-Dressed Dan

All Hell’s Gone

I went to the edge

Looked all around

Very far to travel

But even farther down

Below broken gravel

Under the ground

Brown mucous membrane

With red blood streaks

Silent screams

My spirit can’t speak

But I understand

Gray death at my feet

Unspeakable madness

They look in my eyes

Black empty sockets

My soul screams

to the sky

Sweet master, sweet Lord

Broken misshapen

What have I done

When did it happen

Warm love is done

This is the place

free gifts

Are disgraced

It starts on this street

Free-flowing liquid

Perfumed lace

I felt the touch of a hand

On my tear-stained face

He turned my head

Come away from this place

Walk with my children

Be free with my grace

—Well-Dressed Dan

Well-Dressed Dan was dressed to kill, or be killed as the case may or may not be. He felt good, real good. He was wearing a pinstriped suit with a gold chain from his belt to the gold watch in his pocket. Dan loved gold. He had a London derby on his well-groomed head and a pencil thin mustache. Well-Dressed Dan was tall and thin and reckoned that all the woman loved him. Why if they didn’t, he’d just buy them.

He was in the best gin mill in town, the Bonnie Loon, the whole damn town was named after it, drinking rotgut cheap bourbon whiskey, but it was the best around. The thought of that put a grin on his face that everyone could hate. But Dan always knew he was sharp, especially with the cards. There was plenty of newly found gold in this town, and he wanted it all, not by diggin’, not by pannin’, but by cheatin’.

Bonnie Loon was a town where people came and people left. It wasn’t a place that one cared about another, so Dan was happy, his kind of town. It wasn’t so much where he sat in the saloon but who he sat with that made a strange picture. They sat around a small table, two dirty prospectors and Well-Dressed Dan. Two big and dusty and not-too-smart gentlemen figured Dan, not that it mattered anyway. Plenty of booze and coin on the table and he was holding four aces and the queen of diamonds in one hand, in the other hand between his right-crossed knee and the underside of the table was his derringer. Well-Dressed Dan thought in his hazy mind, What the hell, they’re drunk, I’m drunk, everybody’s drunk. Both prospectors were unarmed, Dan would enjoy this. He shot the one directly across from him directly in the groin. He lifted up the small pistol and shot the gentleman on his left squarely in the forehead. As he was standing, one man made a painful noise, the other made no noise at all. Nobody seemed to pay any attention at all, except the bartender who glanced over as the well-dressed man scooped up the coin and picked up the bottle to leave for his room. The bartender, an Irishman with a bushy red mustache, wrote a note.

Well-Dressed Dan got back to his room and swayed in the doorway, a moment admiring what he could see. The light from the hallway revealed a beautiful crimson-haired woman in his bed. Dan urinated his expensive pants, found a ceramic wash pan on a dresser, and vomited into it and fell into bed. He would fall asleep and dream a dream he never remembers. In that sense, he was lucky.

The Crimson Woman would push him over, Dan stunk. She would go back to sleep with a half a bottle of laudanum on the nightstand by her head. She slept safe and warm in the arms of mother Morpheus.

Hail, Lovely Blossom

Thou can’t ease,

The wreathed victims of

disease,

Can’t close those weary eyes

in gentle sleep,

Which never open but to

weep,

For oh! thy potent charm,

Can agonizing pain disarm,

Expel imperious memory

from her feet

And bid the throbbing heart

forget to beat.

—Crimson Woman

Chapter 3

The Crimson Woman

Chronic Blue

You say you are dark,

but there are holes in you.

With rays of shining

light beaming through

Chronic blue cold

seeps low

across your forests floor.

It is the wood you know,

where spring lies above

warmth braced endured

With thick and calloused

hearts,

Addiction waiting there.

We will play our parts,

in time only remember

As if distant,

cold blue fears

—Knack Knack

The Crimson Woman awoke early and groggy,