Countdown: The Top 20 Jack Ketchum Works of Short Fiction--#9

[For the previous entry on the Countdown, click here.]

#9. "Luck"

Jack Ketchum established himself as a master of the macabre Western with his 2003 novella The Crossings, but he made his first foray into such territory in the 2000 short story "Luck" (collected in Peaceable Kingdom).  Notice how skillfully Ketchum establishes the genre through details of character and setting in the story's opening paragraph:

The night was moonless and quiet save for the crackling of the fire and the liquid tiltback of the Tangleleg whiskey which they passed between them and Faro Bill Brody drawing hard on his Bull Durham and the moans and heavy breathing from Chunk Herbert and the snort and paw of horses and the voices of the men.  Their talk had turned to luck, good and bad.  The men were of the opinion that theirs had taken a far turn for the worse this day for who could have guessed at Turner's Crossing that the stage would be filled with lawmen and citizens with guns drawn and ready and a posse just out of sight behind them.  They had robbed the same stage at the same place at the same time of day three weeks running and never known a problem.

"Luck" instantly immerses the reader in its world, but a second reading reveals also just how carefully plotted the story is.  As the outlaws huddle around and trade tales about luck, Chunk Herbert (who now lies dying after being shot in the head during the botched stagecoach robbery) groans and mumbles incoherently in the
background.  "Sounded like 'Lily' or 'Liddy'," Faro Bill observes at one point.  "Sounded like 'I-ill," Canary Joe Hallihan later offers when Chunk pipes up during his story about Little Dick West, "the unluckiest man who ever walked the Lord's green earth."  Canary Joe recounts personally witnessing West's shooting death on multiple occasions in disparate parts of the country.  Even more uncanny than West's repeated reincarnations is the dire fate that befalls his respective killers.  One gunman's farmhouse burns down about a month later with him and his whole family inside; another hapless assassin trips and breaks his neck while carrying West's corpse down a three-stepped staircase.  Most gruesome of all, a seemingly victorious duelist blows off his own genitalia while holstering his pistol.

Canary Joe's eerie narration creates a hush amongst the band of bandits.  All except Chunk, desperate to confess, and whose last words are terribly clear to his doomed cohorts: "not I-ill or Lily but Li'l Dick West, I shot Li'l Dick West in Dodge City, Kansas, and the fusillade seemed to come from everywhere at once and ended Chunk's luck and their own along with it for good and ever."

A campfire spook story with a wicked twist, "Luck" is a tale that every Ketchum fan will consider himself/herself fortunate to have come across.