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    Knack Knack
    Knack Knack
    Knack Knack
    Ebook149 pages1 hour

    Knack Knack

    By Douglas P. Krimmel

    ()

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    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPage Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateDec 4, 2020
    ISBN9781662402777
    Knack Knack

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      Book preview

      Knack Knack - Douglas P. Krimmel

      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,

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