I FIND the kind of breakfast place I was looking for. A diner I can tell will figure into the mythos of this town however long I stay in it.

I’m in here now, still dreaming, my face and neck washed in the bathroom around back and off to the side, the kind they have at gas stations. My food gets slid in front of me. As I eat, I look at the other people in here. Some look like Indians, others are plain white. In trying to imagine who they are and what they do, I run through an audition in an empty space in my head, trying out who’d be right as a gunslinger, who as an all-around outlaw, train robber, card shark, bookie, pimp, ether addict, scalp trader, cattle drover, owner of the general store who’s hard at work on a sequel to the Bible, starring all of his friends with a few of the transvestites he knows filling in for angels. They pass by as if on wooden sticks parading before my eyes as I eat, and I begin to populate Dodge City for myself. At the end of the audition, I tell them that I’ve seen all I need to, and will be in touch. After breakfast, I take to the streets. What I came here to do can wait a few days, I decide. For now, I’ll just walk around. I follow my senses until a bleating, as of sheep or cows, takes me up one of the side streets and past a lumber mill and a burger joint, to the junkyard. I start creeping around in here, following the sound, aware that there might be a junkyard dog about to leap out and dispatch me. I pick up a piece of wood with some screws sticking out the end, just in case. The bleating, I can tell now, is coming from a wrecked trailer up on cinderblocks, behind a fence that has a hole torn in it, among a bunch of other wrecked vehicles of all sizes. I stand there and listen, figuring it must be about nine a.m. Sooner or later, a man comes around from behind the trailer, and stands on the other side of the fence regarding me.

Then he comes through the hole, introduces himself.

“I’m Junkyard Charles Matthiesson,” he says.

“Hi,” I say, and tell him my name.

A pause. Then, “you got a junkyard dog?” I ask him. “No sir, I do not. Nothing like that.” I drop the wood with the screws in it. Then he asks me where I live, and I say I’m staying in the hotel.

“Ah,” he replies. “That’s where Drifter Jim stayed … once”

Like that’s all already a long time ago.

“I don’t think so,” I reply, though I have no real reason not to admit to knowing what he’s talking about.

“Suit yourself,” he says, and unbuttons one of his shirt sleeves. We both listen to that bleating.

Eventually, he says, “That trailer’s full of sheep. Guy up on the highway about forty miles from here had a wreck last winter, and I came and towed it away for him, never knowing what it was full of. I’ve told him to come pick up his sheep, but so far no sign of the man. Maybe today’s the day. I deal with people who fall off the road, you understand? So there’s no telling when they might turn back up.”

“Must be a sensitive business,” I say.

He thinks awhile, then replies, “Some of the time.”

That’s about the end of our conversation. “So,” I say, “lived in Dodge City long?”

The man unbuttons his other sleeve. “Been sleeping here about as long as I can remember. But no, I wouldn’t exactly say that I live in Dodge City. No sir, not per se.”

I tell Junkyard Charles Matthiesson that I’ll see him around, and roll over onto another side to sleep some more.

[Gutted in Editing]

AFTER HOURS of daytime sleep, I tramp barefoot into the hall for a pack of gum.

Bending over the vending machine’s slot, I notice a large man coming my way. I stand up to meet him. He towers, a hawk talon necklace around his neck and big brown leather boots sunk into the carpeting.

He introduces himself as Drifter Jim, and claims he’s killed one thousand men and sired one thousand sons in Dodge City. I ask him if he feels he’s broken even.

He sighs and shakes his head. “Not even close, young friend.”

I wait for him to continue. “Headed out,” he continues, “bus in two, maybe one hour. Far as Denver and from there don’t ask.”

A look passes between us like we each understand that a changing of the guards is taking place, and that to mention it aloud would, rather than confirm our mutual understanding, leave us both empty-handed.

So I wish him well and return to my Room, to fall asleep with a mouthful of gum.

IT’S 6 AM. I lie on a bench in the bus station, the only traveler to’ve gotten off here, staring across the concourse at the shuttered café, imagining it open, myself outfitted with coffee and some kind of rubbery muffin alone at one of its tables.

The announcer rattles on above me. Coins start falling into vending machines, candy falling into hands.

I fall asleep on the bench, arms looped through one suitcase, legs through the other.

I wake up with two guys’ hands in my front pockets, each squeezing one ball.

I can’t overcome the sensation of those two hands belonging to the same person, though I can see it isn’t so.

“We did this in order to help you,” one says.

“We had to flip you in order to achieve it,” says the other.

I thank them as, slowly, they retract their hands.

It’s past noon. On the TV by the Arrivals board they’re getting ready to execute a guy. I hurry out of the station before they go through with it.

*****

NOW, to find a Hotel.

As it turns out, not too surprisingly, there’s only one downtown, and the Motel 6 way out on the Strip doesn’t seem the best place to start.

The porter has shown me to my Room. Check-in went well, I think.

Just like at Customs in Germany, there were no questions about the novel-bags, despite the smell and dark stains.

I stand modestly beside the porter in the elevator, watching the button he’s pressed.

The Room, once the porter’s gone, is perfect.

Big and comfortable, and replete with hiding places for my materials: panels that peel up, compartments under the rug, safes, back sections in the closet.

Preparing to parcel out the pieces, a wet soapy washcloth draped over my nose and mouth like an ether rag, I wonder if, at the front desk, they could tell exactly what I’d come here for and assigned me this Room accordingly, or if every Room in this Hotel is exactly the same, every guest just like me.

Even before the ether hits, I can tell it’s not a question I’m likely to make much headway on.

When I’ve hidden the pieces, I lie down, washcloth over my forehead, and listen as they begin to seep.

The Room is full of hiding places, but none are exactly sealed. For now, it sounds like a slow boil, like ants look, and to this sound I pass out.