American Sllop
I. In which Dr. Hawthorne comes to town ~
The snakeskin wagon that caused such bluster in the broadsheets from Oregon to Illinois kicked dust over the saloon steps. The menfolk—wranglers, drunks, malingerers—took to hollering, and someone rang the rusty church bell.
Jesse, the Calloway orphan, hung back, careful not to impede the homesteaders and traders and their women and children skittering through the bone-dry dirt to see Dr. Hawthorne himself lay out his wares, or more specifically, his ware: a hinged box barely big enough for a decent-sized hog.
As Jesse traipsed his two-headed donkey Buridan along to gawp, the flies and the stink of the freakish beast curled the lips and twitched the moustaches of his estranged townsfolk. The townsfolk collectively chuntered and pondered, until the prancing Hawthorne flapped out his beaver-tailed coat and jigged around the inanimate sideshow as if some holy spirit compelled him.
“This, good sirs!” He hooked a wandering eye. “This is your gen-u-ine prayers answered. Your leisure, your artifice, transmogrified!”
A short story by Ian Johnson.