Jonathan woke at noon, mouth furred, stomach adrift. He had no idea where he was, and for all he cared he might have been in hell. He found his way down the narrow, dark stairs to the bar.

‘Feeling better?’ the bartender said.

‘Just give me a bottle.’

He drank, passed out; awoke, drank and got carried upstairs and tucked into bed just as he had the night before.

The next day it was well past noon before he maneuvered his way down the narrow stairs through a haze of nausea. Leaning on the bar for support, he saw what seemed to be clumps of something hanging from the bartender’s belt. He squinted at them. ‘What are those things?’ he said.

‘These? Genuine Indian scalps,’ said the bartender, delighted to have at last caught the attention of so important a customer. ‘This here one, see’ – he unbuckled the belt and flopped it up on the bar – ‘this here’s Red Eagle. Now I run into Red Eagle—’

‘Are you Bowie Jack? Guy that owns this joint?’

‘Yep. That’s me.’ His features looked as though they’d been yanked together in the middle of his face by his fishhook of a nose.

Jonathan squinted at the puckered cheeks much as he’d squinted at the scalps. ‘They call you that because of them?’

‘Yep. I cut ’em off with my Bowie—’

‘How’d you do it?’ Jonathan said.

‘Whaddya mean?’

‘How do you scalp a head?’

‘Don’t you want to hear how I fought—’

‘No.’

‘But most folks—’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ said Bowie Jack, bravely recovering his enthusiasm, ‘you slip the knife in at the back of the neck first, see?’

‘Why?’

‘Whaddya mean?’

Jonathan sighed irritably. ‘Why not at the front of the head?’

‘Well, gee, ’cause it sticks, sorta – you know, like skin on lamb chop fat. The hair—’

‘Give me a bottle of whiskey.’

‘—don’t come off clean—’

‘Now, goddamn you!’

Sitting at his table, my grandfather’s hands shook so badly he couldn’t pour the whiskey into his glass; he had to drink it from the bottle. Toward evening the bar filled up. He sat at his table alone in a sea of noise, forcing the alcohol down his throat as fast as he could. His aim was simple unconsciousness, but it seemed to be taking more effort to get there than it had in the previous two days.

He bought a second bottle and set it on the table in front of him before he’d managed to finish off the first. He concentrated hard: only an inch to go. He didn’t notice when the man in Galway chokers appeared. Why should he? There were lots of men around; he paid no attention to any of them, although his stomach lurched dangerously when Bowie Jack pounded the bar. ‘This here’s Preacher Spoonable,’ Bowie Jack said. ‘What do you say, boys? Want a little entertaining?’

The preacher wore a black linen duster, a black, wide-brimmed hat; in one hand a Bible, in the other a horsewhip.