Kinsome

The Kinsome homestead used to be by the bend in the river, and it was a three-story house with wooden walls sitting on a brick foundation.  The walls were whitewashed up to about headheight, and after that the original paint peeled and drifted away until the bare wood beneath showed through and the woodworm and the beetles went after it.  For a while they continued to use the attic, but then Agnes Kinsome, some forty years ago now, was upstairs in her claw-foot, cast-iron bath when a breezy summer morning blew all the wood away and revealed her to anyone looking up.  There was a mighty sighing and there was very nearly a law passed after that that said that women had to wear bathclothes before getting washed.
But that's just the original homestead, and though a majority of the Kinsome clan were raised there, many of them spread out and around and didn't drift too far from the homestead or the orchards where they raised their trees, grew their fruit and made their jams, preserves and chutneys.  If'n you wander yourself into the 7-11 on Main even today you can find a shelf of Kinsome preserves, and the fruit in the baskets that isn't imported all comes from those orchards.  So there's a right little estate of Kinsome houses all dotted around the homestead, and one or two a bit further out when there'd been a falling out, or a need to put someone where they couldn't be rightly seen too much.  Maybe just at church on Sundays and invited along to weddings and funerals so that they couldn't be turning up unannounced and uninvited.
I was sat in the lounge bar of the sports bar, a fairly modern place by the standards of Rainville.  There was a tv up in the corner, a sixties black-and-white number with the rabbit ear antenna that Rita Davies, the barmaid, would twist and turn this way and that whenever the wind came in from the South-east or the north-west, or sometimes the south-west or the due-east.  She suffered with that set, but the good old boys always wanted it on and they always wanted the game on, for all they wouldn't tell her what the game was.  She'd stand there, hands on her hips, chest heaving and her face all reddened, demanding to know if it was the football, the basketball, the baseball or the hockeyball that they all wanted and they'd laugh and cackle and spit in the sawdust on the floor and bang their glasses on the wooden bar and she'd holler some more.
Pretty much what they all wanted was the beach volleyball but there wasn't a man-jack among them were going to tell her that.
"Evan?"  That rat-blasted inspector was still tagging along after me.  I'd taken him for a ride on the motorbike, no helmet, no jacket, just the metal and the rubber and the asphalt dangerously close to his face.  I'd felt his death-grip on my ribs, and I reckoned the bruises would still be there in a week; it's a good job I'm not seeing anyone presently or there'd be a reckoning over that.  I could smell the piss on him too, but I'd been intending to get that out of him.  But he was still holding on, still hanging on in there, assessing me on things I've got no idea about.  And now he was talking to me in the sports-bar.  "Evan?  Are we... are you... are we drinking before we go looking for Mr. Kinsome?"  His hand dipped into his coat pocket and I was sure he was going to pull out his little assessment book and start writing me up in there.  But instead he comes out with this linen square like what you use for keeping the sun off of your head in the summer, and blows his nose on it.  I tried to hide my disgust; I don't know that I'm much good at it.
"I ain't drinkin'," I said, trying to keep a civil tongue in my head.  There was a couple of the good old boys turned their heads when I spoke, and I glared at them till they turned them heads right back again.  "You can, makes no bones to me.  I'd advise against it though, if you're serious about seeing what the job's like.  Things can happen fast."
"Well jes' like that.  If you isn't a one for drinking, Evan, what're y'all doing in my bar?"  And there was Rita, her wig on backwards if I wasn't mistaken, standing behind the bar in the doorway that led up to her boudoir.  And I've never been up there, and I never want to.  There are some places that just aren't safe for a man to go by himself.
"I'm looking for a man," I said.  "Goes by the name of Mr. Kinsome, as I hear tell."
"As you hear tell," she mimicked, rouged lips moving sensually.  "Well at the last count there were thirty-four as went by the name of Mr. Kinsome, and then there's another thirteen who laying claim to that with no rights as any judge would accord."
"So point me at the first one," I said, allowing myself a smile.  The inspector's face was falling fast.  "And I'll work my way through until I find the one I'm after."

Bounty Hunter

I'm sat out back when he comes round; white collar on his shirt and nicely pressed cuffs.  Hands that look like they know what a manicure is.  There's a smell about him too, takes me a minute or so to realise that it's cologne.
"Evan?"
I grunt and point towards the outhouse.  It's a wooden structure, two stories and you don't want to be pissing downstairs when it's busy and everyone else is pissing upstairs.  The man shakes his head and there's a fine sprinkle of dandruff comes off him and floats around him for a moment like a dandelion clock exploding in September.  I shrug, spit at a beetle that's pushing some ball of dirt along and hit it.  Not sure it likes it.
"Evan."  Ah, there's no question now.  Someone knew who he was looking at all along and thought he'd be clever about it.  I point at the outhouse again like there's a devil sitting on my shoulder, egging me along.
"Right," says the man.  His voice is rougher than I was expecting from someone who takes such good care of hisself.  "So I go and check out that edifice and when I come back you're gone and no-one knows where, right?"
Edifice?  Last time I heard that word was in a saloon bar where two old ladies decided to sit and play scrabble while their grand-daughters led the burlesque show.  That was quite a sight, and it was a damn shame I was there to collect a bounty on one of the bar-staff.  When he saw me he took down a bottle of good sipping whisky and threw it at my head.  Missed by a barn-door, but it clonked one of the grannies good and hard; knocked her false teeth out of her mouth and across the board.  While I was drawing and getting a clear shot, the burlesque girls had left the stage and stormed the bar; I ended up having to pull him free but I was a bit on the late side; one of the girls had got her thighs around his neck and strangulated him.  He looked happier than he would have done if I'd got to him first, but it was another of those dead rather than alive bounties.  Folks tend to pay less if they don't get to inflict their own brand of justice.
"You're Evan the bounty hunter.  You brought in the body of Dougal "Four shots" McInney, the body of Singapore Sally, and...," he pauses for a moment, his eyes looking up at the sky.  I could tell him there's nothing up there, not even a turkey vulture today.  Might be a cloud in that bright blue if you're hunting hard though.  "... and the face of Georgia Oates."
Hah, yes,  Georgia Oates.  Sweet girl by all accounts, bit on the heavy side but could still make a leg on the dance floor and popular afterwards too, from what I heard.  Took herself off with a lad from Nags Hill way and her family couldn't quite handle the idea.  So they took out a bounty on her, but as it was told afterwards, they couldn't manage the alphabet between them and didn't understand that it read Dead or Alive.  That's not the way I got it, and I spend time talking to both of her brothers, but it's sure the way they told it later.  She wasn't hard to find, wasn't hiding, just living her life with the guy of her choosing and his sister.  So I turned up and explained to them what needed to happen for everyone to go on being happy and we were mostly sorted out and organised to go when her father-in-law turns up and turns out to be Jeddy Teems, a man who's never let his gun out of his hand.  Then there's shouting and there's arguing and hollering, and despite it all being sorted and easy already Jeddy's having none of it.  And then it all went a bit messy.
So... since no-one was paying me for Jeddy Teems, even though by all rights I should have picking up six or seven bounties for that one, we sat down together with a sheep-knife, some lipstick and a needle and thread and I went back with the face of Georgia Oates.  And if there's a girl out there, bit on the heavy side, who looks a lot like her still, then I guess that must be one of them doppelgoers you hear tell about.
I point at the outhouse again.  I doubt it's going to work but sometimes with these clever ones if you act dumb enough it gets to be catching.  He shakes his head.
"There's a new bounty out," he says.  "They've got a name for the Coffin-robber.  Robert Kinsome."
Bobby Kinsome, huh?  I figured he was up to something, but bodysnatching seems low even for him. And he'd sell his mother and his grandmother to the brothel in exchange for a room there for the night and not complain when the management puts his mother and his grandmother in his bed.
"You going after him?"
I nod, there's not much point denying it.  Everyone knows that I pick up the bad bounties.
"That's great," says the man.  "I'll be coming with you."
I don't say nothing, but I can feel my eyes widen in surprise.  Before I react any further he's talking again, and I'm starting to get pissed off.
"Don't bother, Evan.  I know what you're thinking, I know what you're going to say.  But that bit of paper you got, the one that says you're a bounty hunter?  That's got an expiration date on it.  And that date is just seven days away.  You need it renewed, Evan, and that means you've got to convince me that you can do the job."
"Inspector?" my voice always surprises them, it's almost high enough to be a woman's.  Guess it never broke from when I was a kid.
"That's right Evan.  Of the last twenty bounties you've run you've brought in every one of them dead. We're assessing you to make sure that you're not just taking the easy option."
Easy option?  Singapore Sally with her bodyguard disguised as a nursemaid and her poison-dipped shuriken and a line in arson that'd make a pyromaniac look like a kindergartener was the easy option?
"So, you and me, Evan.  Bringing in Robert Kinsome."
Well now, that could be fun.  I wonder if I'd get re-licensed if I bring Bobby in alive and the Inspector in dead?