#I thought of this when looking at Blondie's horse in GBU the other day

[trifoliate-undergrowth]

listen I don't know a LOT about horses but it is funny to me when a rough dusty drifter rides into town in a western and they're riding a tall elegant saddle-horse that's been immaculately cared for and has a spotless, gleaming coat, instead of a shaggy dusty remuda horse like some sort of sturdy little mustang or cow-pony.

[believerindaydreams]

further scenes from a GBU/Rawhide AU

yeah this is gonna be one of those things where a good working knowledge of the movie as written helps, or I’d be here until Christmas getting the details finely lined up. 

…Angel Eyes is up to something.

Tuco’s sure of it, suspects he would be even if he hadn’t kept an ear out for the rumours and muttered legends- that’s the trouble with his ex-partner’s sense of style, it always had the damnedest way of landing them both in the soup. It sounds good, fine, to be the kind of man who can stop a room dead just by walking through the door. In practice it drew targets on their backs and made it impossible to find boltholes from the law, frightened away the kind of people who trusted him when he was just a solitary bandit with a long foolish charge sheet.

And breaking Angel Eyes of that habit, chances are the man would have broken him first. Angel isn’t the kind of man who takes correction easily. What he is, is a man with a good nose for opportunity- and if he thinks that the nonsense about Carson’s gold is worth pursuing, well, that’s a rainbow to try chasing.

“May I ask,” the gunshop owner asks, managing to stutter on just three syllables. Some people would have killed for that out of hand.

But hey, he’s in a good mood; alive and with a whole skin and armed with a gun that sings a good tune, that’s a fine thing. “You want to know why I needed a weapon at all? I didn’t have one before, that’s why.”

The man moans. Tuco takes a final swig of gooey red liquor and kindly shoves it across the counter.

“See, you get a few men together for a gang, you know? Trustworthy, the kind who won’t shoot you in the back for your gold teeth, so everyone can sleep at night without worrying. All working fine, until they get a sniff of two hundred thousand in gold and then suddenly it’s every man for himself and somebody steals my horse when I’m having a siesta. Bastards.”

“You have two hundred thousand dollars in gold?” For a frightened man, he’s looking very greedy.

“Not yet,” Tuco admits. “But I will- hey, when I get it I’ll come back here and buy a set of your best silver plated revolvers, how’s that?”

No harm in promises, with that kind of money floating around.

Hell, he might even do it.

**********

God must really hate him, to let him find the one stagecoach in this whole stretch of desert but have there be no water inside it.

“Water,” the lone survivor croaks, longingly, and Rowdy can’t even answer him at first; his own throat’s too choked and dusty. “Water, I’ll give you anything- I’ll give you gold.”

Gold, what does he care about that when he’s dying of thirst too? “Where?”

Carson misunderstands him. Babbles a lot of nonsense about a cemetery while Rowdy searches frantically, turning over bodies and upending dry canteens with scant respect. It’d be all too likely an end, if he were to just keel over right now and add one more to the pile of corpses.

“Out there,” Carson gasps, pointing.

He runs out, and finds it- hot, alkaline, but blessedly liquid. Drinks too much but so satisfying, whooping in delight. Dampens his hat and lets the water run down his face, soothing his sunburns.

When Rowdy comes back, hat brimful of water, Carson’s stopped breathing.

And there’s another man here now. A loudly-dressed bandito of all people, with tears in his eyes and a prayer on his lips.

“Hey. Hey, Carson, don’t die…don’t die! Two hundred thousand in gold, how can you give up with so much to live for? Santa maria-” and the rest is all a blur, Spanish and maybe something else.

There’s something greatly horrible, about walking towards this scene of private agony- but innocence left him when Favor did. Gently, Rowdy reaches over to close the staring eyes.

“I’m sorry….was he a friend of yours?”

“Him? No, no- I never saw him before, and I curse my luck for it- who are you?”

The memory of Favor’s hard horse sense stops him telling the truth; Rowdy runs a hand through his sun-bleached hair, self-consciously. “These days I go by- Blondie. Uh, what’s your name?”

The bandito looks rather pleased. “Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez.”

“Uh.“

“My friends, I let them call me Tuco. You’re a friend, if you don’t shoot me and you were with Carson before he died- did he say anything to you, about the gold? But- say, you don’t look so good. All that mess on your face. Been out in the sun too long?”

“My-“ boss, captain, friend all run through his head, and none of them are right. “My partner, he got scared. Took all the water and left me to die in the desert.”

Tuco clucks his tongue like a schoolmarm or a mother hen; but there’s a shifting wariness in his eyes that speaks of quick, haunted understanding. “Can’t trust anyone these days, eh? Same thing happened to me, isn’t that funny….”

At the end of a quarter hour, they’ve gotten three things straight.

One, he’s got half the secret to a fortune in gold.

Two, none other than the famous Tuco Ramirez has the other half.

Three, it’s only a little way from here to a monastery where they’ll take good care of him, quiet grey stones and cooling darkness, and as Tuco says, they can hash out the rest of it when he’s better.

“But you have to live and get well first, eh? Don’t worry. Tuco will be a very fine friend to you…”

Might just be the gold; but he has a funny feeling he can trust Tuco.

Then again, he’d thought that about Favor…

*************

some time later

“He’s not a good man, my brother,” Pablo says to him.

Rowdy can guess why. A good man wouldn’t have taught him how to smoke cigarillos (“not my favourite, but you smoke what you can get”). A good man wouldn’t have played that nasty trick telling him he was about to die, or got into a shouting match with a priest.

A good man wouldn’t have saved him, probably. “But he’s your brother. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

“Christ’s love exceeds all other,” Pablo intones. “I am trying to warn you away from him. Though it seems clear that you have few other choices of company, should you leave.”

“I guess so...”

“But perhaps you won’t have a reason to leave. In this war, there are always more wounded men, more casualties who come crying to our doors for help- we could use a man with your charity and compassion.”

Rowdy can’t help a little bitterness. “What compassion?”

“For one, you put up with Tuco.” The smile passes quickly, but in that moment it lays the family resemblance bare. “That’s a task to tax the most stalwart patience.”

“He was saving me, though. A stranger he didn’t know at all, he was just playing Good Samaritan.”

If there’s pleasure in Pablo’s expression, it’s hemmed in by caution. “That’s…not wholly characteristic of my brother. Is there something he wants from you? Something you’re not prepared to give, perhaps?”

“No. No, nothing.”

He knows what Pablo’s asking, knows well enough why the man suspects an ulterior motive- but he can’t bring himself to say it. Not after seeing Tuco’s tired stupor after that fight with his brother, sitting up until dawn and drinking himself bleary-eyed. To cut off that solitary bind, that’s a cruelty he’d shoot a man sooner than commit.

It’s too much like him and Favor, and he’d gladly have given up any share in this impossible fortune if somebody had lied like this, soothed their path smooth again.

“That’s a greater kindness than I think you might recognise,” Pablo says, staring straight into his eyes. “But I- I thank you for telling me this.”

“You will go and make it up with him, won’t you?”

The holy man mutters something that sounds uncommonly like a groan. “He’ll want to toast our famiy in six kinds of liquor- which wouldn’t be such a problem, if he didn’t expect me to keep up. The other brothers will not approve.”

“If I had a brother, I’d risk a hangover for him,” Rowdy says.

Pablo looks dubious. Says he’ll think about it; but the sound that wakes Rowdy from his siesta later is, he’s sure, the sound of two glasses ringing against each other.

[believerindaydreams]

GBU rewatch followup

...cleaned up, readable version, now with fewer typos and after-the-fact commentary in parentheticals. 

things I am looking out for in particular:

- how to write trios 

- everything that Angel Eyes does (less than I thought, it turns out; I was bang on the money with “Animal Magnetism” having him only exist for Meaningful Moments)

- the state of Eastwood’s hair (with the hat you don’t really notice it except in the desert scenes, when it is Absurd)

- some of that sweet, sweet Morricone music because it’s the one part of the film that no amount of clever writing will adequately evoke and I love it to pieces (still true)

let’s do this thing then

like, the opening credits are pure stylish flair. That can’t be a book. It’s gorgeous. It’s perfect for what it is. has nothing to do with translation to a 70s au but that is entirely, utterly besides the point

Tuco’s “I have a gun in one hand and a dead chicken in the other” will never not make me laugh

SPAIN: specifically the Spanish landscape and how gorgeous it looks. it all sort of runs together, appropriation and reappropriation and Spain standing in for Mexico…oh hello Angel Eyes,  you look a lot more impressive than Tuco does. Nice entrance.

Also we don’t actually know at first that he’s The Bad? He’s just wandering into frame like he could be the Good cowboy or something, it’s not the music that tells you. It’s the way that the guy’s family respond to his presence and just Go without saying anything. Something about Angel def. invokes silence. No wonder he and Blondie get on.

…like, this whole scene where he’s like “I am going to enjoy your delicious soup but stare at you“ is actually hilarious? Like he’s def. got a sense of humour- it’s just that everybody looks subdued with Tuco in the picture.

There’s a very thin divide between the tension of comedy and the tension of “is he gonna kill me” and Angel Eyes just straddles all over that line.

I like you, Man Eating Soup. Too bad you gotta die now.

…yeah, I think my characterisation of “bounty hunter who keeps his given word but has no qualms” is bang on the money.

last time I didn’t notice how Lee’s voice shifts to being more amused when he’s about to do something incredibly violent. Or how great his voice was at all. Like that was clearly a mistake, he’s great.

Tuco! *hearts* With a trio of men surrounding him in a triangle. ‘m sure that’s thematic.

Clint sounds like Rowdy but more terse.

Oh hell I love the way that we get closeups on Tuco staring at things. I love characters who stare at things in general (cf. Stargate and a team who communicate by looks), and Leone delivers there.

“how much you worth now” and Tuco’s just lol I dunno.

oh Tuco you theatrical hooligan nobody believes your absurd accusations. also geez I couldn’t write that many swears if I spent all day over it.

That is a DAMN sexy wanted poster.

Forgot about Blondie calling Tuco “known at the rat” part. Hmm. I wonder what that’s about?

I always forget how choreographed the duo’s escapes are, like it’s not just shooting a rope, there’s a lot of effort that go into those.

you smug thing Clint. you smug thing. (I assume this was just one of his wry looks past the camera, as he does a lot).

does trans! Angel Eyes in the 70s smoke a pipe. Yes. Yes he does.

“even a filthy beggar like that has got a protecting angel” oh Angel Eyes you has a crush. also a pretty good sense for a scam- are we meant to infer that Angel and Tuco used to play this game? (Also he has correctly assessed Blondie’s Divine Status or whatever it is that keeps him clear of disasters.) 

the way that Tuco jumps on the horse is just. pure sex appeal.

“sawed off runt” Blondie gets in 1 insult but it actually means something, as opposed to Tuco doing 10,000 for the sake of the audience

I see what you did there with putting “the good” on screen just after Blondie abandons Tuco to die horribly in  a desert. I see it.

yeah, I thought I remembered Tuco saving up all the really good insults for Spanish.

(now that I know that Eli’s from Brooklyn, I can’t *not* watch a performance of a deeply pissed off New Yorker who’s in this godsforsaken desert for the dosh but refuses to budge an inch on being a fast talking SOB. The rapid fire line deliveries for sure.)

had forgotten this bit about Angel slapping around a girl….

Aw, Tuco as soon as he finds water is A. drink some and B. play with it. awww you’re adorable Tuco

must go figure out what that thing Tuco wears on his hand is. also contemplate whether the 70s one wears braces.

yeah, like, “I got dumped so I’ll pull myself together and also drink this man’s crazy red liquor and take a hat cos I need a hat” that is peak Tuco right there.

no wait that wasn’t. What is is the exquisitely judged moment where he decides that the guy will probably want the liquor to drown his sorrows afterwards and leaves it.

I am very fond of the way that the war is presented as a disaster that is Happening but which none of the three leads give a __ about. The much maligned poster got that bang on the money.

everything looks so lived in, always, even though I assume they were building sets? Why can’t American westerns of the period look This Real, did they actually build houses or what

Blondie has vividly green eyes. Right then. Tuco’s are brown.

Tuco hires some backup to help him with Blondie. that’s…smart.

I think, actually, that Blodnie’s blue circle calico shirt is something he oughta wear in the 70s. It suits.

��your spurs” like a knight, ha. That’s a terrible gag, Blondie.

why is there so much blood on Tuco’s face. what was he doing to get banged up like that.

so he’s on a stool with a noose, with a gun pointed at him, and Blondie is still not acting like this is anything serious.

ohmigod I LOVE this bit with the cannon and the house collapsing. Hah. It seriously is like Blondie’s a force of nature though

Tuco tracks Blondie by favourite cigar stubs. Also smokes them after. Tempting to borrow that. (like they’re in bed together, Tuco steals his cigar, that kinda thing)

…is he. Is Tuco wearing flares in the 1860s. Yeah I think he is.

“I brought TWO guns” lol sure you did Tuco.

And Tuco winces when Shorty dies and is it like, two against one would make things too complex for him, or he’s mad that Blondie replaced him that fast, or what’s going on here that he let another man hang like that. Blondie doesn’t seem to mind much.

black horse = black car for Tuco.

Tuco mocking Blondie’s fair skin, like yeah there’s definitely a bit of a racial thing here.

“You’ll die. Very slowly, old friend.” also I have an umbrella ain’t it pretty

I think one of the reasons I glom on this film is because for all its length there is literally something happening every single minute. Like most films have dead time when I could, you know, breathe or something, but I haven’t stopped typing since I turned this on.

(the comedy sensibility there as well. You can’t have dead air when you’re writing comedy, things have to be leading somewhere. )

course at the moment the point is “look at this very big desert with two very small people in it”...here comes the whump. Clint sure knows how to lean into it.

sweet jesus Tuco with the sun behind you there you look like some kinda avenging 70s disco angel yourself. also the headband.

here comes the celestial music. here comes the cavalry. see, when Tuco gets into a mess he has to get out of it himself, but this is the second time that Divine Intervention has saved Blondie.

…gosh it’d be funny if that watch in the stagecoach was the Few Dollars More watch. I’m sure it ain’t.

Tuco’s not very good at interrogation. I’m sort of comforted by this, because it suggests he doesn’t do it very often.

when did Blondie get to the stagecoach. seriously when. (oh right it’s Leone. movement is a free action as long as it’s off camera)

that’s twice that Blondie’s called Tuco a rat though. what is about rats for Blondie.

maximum Clint hair fluff here. why do I have a thing for heroes with daft hair. tis daft.

I don’t think that New Mexico has goat skin waterbottles? Whereas they are all over the place in Spain. Hmm.

…okay, I have missed something. Why is Tuco wearing an eye patch now? Like, did he just look at Bill and say “that’s great I’m having that”. Anyway the way he forgets and shoves it up his face to look at the wall hanging is a hoot. (he keeps doing this like a kid playing pirates)

battle between “keeping on hat” and “oh I’m praying”- hat wins. Figures. 

Tuco still has a nasty cut on his face from before. Either this is very good continuity or Eli got hit by a brick during filming and it’s still healing. I honestly cannot tell.

Tuco genuinely doesn’t know nothing about Blondie’s past. Figures.

oh you *bastard* Tuco trying to exhort a deathbed confession. that’s probably his lowest moment in the whole movie actually- cos Blondie started it with the whole “let’s play who dumps who in the desert”

of course Blondie doesn’t fall for it. course he doesn’t. (I do wonder how much of this is Tuco wondering what Blondie will let him get away with.)

also there’s an implied passage of time during which Blondie thinks it’s hilarious to have Tuco fetch and carry for him. That tracks.

ohhhh and the Pablo scene like I have a lot of feels about this. mostly about the way that Tuco is genuinely happy to see Pablo and it all goes wrong, and I already write bits of this relationship into fics but aww…Pablo is genuinely disappointed. Tuco genuinely loves him.

(cannot tell whether Tuco shags a lot of girls or is angry with Pablo and wants him to think he shags a lot of girls. could go either way.)

BLONDIE WHY ARE YOU WATCHING THIS you creep

in which Tuco just straight-up makes up junk about his brother cos he has an audience. and Blondie goes along with it to the extent of giving him a cigar, and it’s- aw. actual partnership moment. for reals.

“god’s not on our side” yup, and maybe Blondie would have done something if he hadn’t been asleep? But I get the idea he’s happy to take cues from Tuco for improv. 

 Tuco’s “oh fuck” moment inf. relatable.

hello Angel. And our duo knows him, too.

…I, uh, honestly can’t figure out why Blondie thinks it’s a good move for Tuco to pretend to be Bill Carson. Like I honestly can’t see how they’d even think that was a thing to do unless they’d seen the movie up to this part. Like, Tuco and Blondie basically have to be plugged into the narrative to know to do anything here except keep their mouths shut and hope to get to Sad Hill at some point?

Angel Eyes is a practical bastard. Also a sergeant. heigh-ho.

these three definitely know each other and I can’t figure out how. What’s this friendship thing about? It is a mystery. (def Tuco and Angel have a past though. What kind?)

Also Tuco figures that Angel is gonna straight up poison him at first, so that couldn’t have been a wholly easy relationship.

…okay, I’ll have to have a scene where Tuco finally says “yes I think your being called Angel is a hoot”- it is, after all, Here.

Is it that Angel doesn’t like getting his hands dirty, or that it’s easier to fob off the trouble on somebody who does like it, or that he genuinely thinks that anyone less hefty than Wallace might not be able to shove around Tuco like this? mysteries.

I wonder what Blondie is thinking. The prison choir is the goddamn creepiest thing.

yeah, Blondie, you think you’re tough but I think you’d spill your guts out also if the alternative was gouging. That’s not Tuco being a coward, that’s just Angel Eyes treating the object of his crush/a stoic/the white guy better than Tuco. It’s not like there’s a Great Moral Principle at stake for Tuco not to talk or anything.

“We’re going for a ride” is like custom-built to be an Epic Catchphrase though.

…blood doesn’t puddle like that. Someone on production screwed up. (blood is always theatrical in this film. too red and technicolour.)

…where was I? Oh yes. Tuco’s now worth 3000 dollars and is proud of it.

And Wallace is enjoying hurting him. Wallace is exactly the type that Tuco doesn’t grok; hurt somebody because they hurt you, or because you’re mad at them, or they have something you want, but just for the sake of hurting, that I don’t think tracks for him.

(Tuco and Blondie’s scam sure has got around if Wallace knows it. I guess that could have been Angel who told him, but it’s…it’s more like this thing where everyone in the film knows things that were said on screen before? I’d have to do another watch to contemplate this, but the notion fascinates me.)

That “I can’t do it while you’re watching me” is almost cute. Like, obviously it’s a ploy to kill Wallace, but also, it’s cute.

Oh yes, the “we nearly killed Eli” scene”. Thank christ the man had a natural sense of self preservation.

Lots of people in this film wear sexy short cloaks. I love those. I want one of the trio to have on in the 70s, anachronistic or no- maybe Blondie? Dunno.

all three leads have a bit where they’re just spying on the other two. v. sexy.

I’d just like to note that as somebody who has infinite patience for wandering around deserted lonely locales, I love this desolation hotel scene.  

YES BATH SCENE, LOVE THE BATH SCENE

…dumping in all the nice bath salts cos he can. Completely undeterred by being a naked man in a bath facing a gun. continuing with the bath afterwards…

And also Blondie knows Tuco just by the gun. That’s not tracker smarts, that’s, um, divine inspiration.

kitten. Aw, you little kitten.

the way Blondie says “old friend” Angel Eyes actually suggests that it was Tuco who met Angel first.

“So that’s why you came to Tuco”. Yeah, I love mutually necessary relationships, and this one sure counts.

“I want that blond alive” yes we know Angel. We know.

“Were you gonna die alone” oh that IS shippy. 

sometimes Tuco crosses himself after a death, sometimes he doesn’t. there’s no apparent logic there.

the way that Blondie whistles and shoots a guy is max. cowboy aesthetic. also messed up.

Blondie seems cool with Tuco killing Angel. Okies.

(I guess he figures at this point that Angel will have to be waiting...)

I’d remembered the “it’s for you”. Had not remembered Tuco tearing up the paper after, but whatevers.

where does Tuco get all these hats. How? Does he just steal hats whenever he sees a new one?

Leone’s favourite trick of ‘things off camera don’t exist” is amazing. really it is. A whole army camp…

and really, this is all extra, they could just go ahead and have the cemetery duel now, but that’s not really the point.

Actually, Blondie does seem perfectly content to let Tuco do most of the talking when it needs to be done.

That whole bit with the liquor swigging- goes along with my notions of Blondie not actually being a very heavy drinker, Tuco being more enthusiastic. also I do like Tuco’s genuine “really?!” upon being told he could make colonel, like this is the first time somebody’s told him he could be something other than a priest or a bandit, and maybe he would have gone for it if he wasn’t hip deep into the 200,000 thing.

And the mutual Blondie/Tuco “this guy’s insane” looks they swap when the captain’s not looking at them, tis fab.

it’s so weird that nobody in this camp is talking…until they start yelling.

Tuco’s notion of avoiding getting killed by cannon fire is to hide as far out of frame as he can. Given how Leone framing works, this is maybe not so dumb.

it takes the entire civil war for Blondie to render a moral judgement, i. e. war is bad. I feel like he’s obscurely irritated that circumstances have forced him to profess an opinion about something.

Hang on, didn’t Blondie learn the name of the cemetery from Angel Eyes earlier? Does he actually need Tuco at this point?

Blondie next to a big case that says “explosives” is…uh, very Bugs Bunny.

…oh, yeah, it does help having a partner to blow up the bridge. Right.

it is genuinely fun, though, watching these two work as partners. They’re very practical when they want to be.

Tuco taking several minutes to gulp his way into telling Blondie his half of the secret is…interesting. Trusting. And I suspect probably saves his life later. Cos Tuco’s right and blowing up this bridge is dangerous and one of them could easily die…and he is, for once, actually doing his best to do right by his partner in a completely stupid and insane world.

lighting your cigar on the explosives is also very Bugs Bunny.

Blondie, just cos Tuco went to sleep with his arse in easy kicking position doesn’t mean you have to kick it. Also I wonder what Tuco’s whimpering there.

and the young soldier scene. I have notions about the utility of Useless But Kind Gestures that I’ve been ranting about in various 1984 postings for a while, and Blondie gets one here. Oughta contemplate that at length later.

oh look it’s the cemetery. Tuco throws away his map.

…and three minutes go clean out of my head, as they do, because the simple fact is that even with the grave name this is a ridiculous task - how do you find one grave in all five thousand? and Leone is covering for it with a mystical quasi-religious invocation to get Tuco to where we need him to be. Thing is, it works on me. Can’t talk sensibly about the Ecstasy, there is is.

The framing of Angel Eyes coming in is epic, I gotta say. First person. Have we had any first person all film?

…but Blondie, why were you having Tuco dig up Arch Stanton’s grave when it’s the wrong grave, unless you knew Angel was coming? He knows Angel’s coming is all I can think of.

also I think we’re being asked to assume that Blondie took Tuco’s gun while Tuco was asleep with his arse in the air, unloaded it, then put it back, and then kicked him awake. dang if that isn’t a sequence I would have enjoyed Leone committing to celluloid.

okay, so. Three-way.

Tuco’s thinking “if one of these people is gonna shoot me, it’s probably gonna be Angel. So I’ll shoot Angel, and Blondie probably shoots Angel too, and then we see where we are. if they both shoot me I’m dead anyway.”.

Angel Eyes, I bet, is just figuring he should get off a shot at the better shooter first, and he figures that’s Blondie.

Blondie knows who has a weapon, so he just has to spin this out and make it look good for Angel Eyes. Easy. I wonder what he would have done if it wasn’t, though?

(we aren’t ever gonna know are we)

I can’t tell who Angel Eyes is trying to shoot with his last shot. I assume it’s Blondie, but the framing makes it hard to tell?

Tuco, you hafta bring all that money back to civilisation, wrecking the bags doesn’t help there.

Ah yes. The noose. Where did Blondie even get a noose? Is it worthwhile asking the question?

I spent a long time the first time I watched this, genuinely wondering if Tuco was gonna get killed. (I didn’t want Blondie to kill him.) And I was genuinely unsure…until I realised that we were setting it up just like old times, and Blondie was gonna have to shoot him free because he always *had* shot him free, and was always going to, and it was a oroubous of a movie. Which is all the more so in the day of easy DVD rewatching.

which is not to say I didn’t quiver when Blondie levels the gun.

anyway after all he’s been through, I think Tuco’s entitled to shout that last line.

whew!

and some followups for the notes 

...yeah, it definitely makes more sense for Angel Eyes to be an old acquaintance of Tuco’s (unless you’re writing a fic where Blondie is a Weird Force of Nature and trying to reconcile two different people’s connection to him is a driving force of the plot, but I’ll remember this for the Animal Magnetism sequel).

I guess that Tuco is definitely pretending to be Bill Carson, but why? How does that help them? (I assume Blondie doesn’t see the whole torture-by-Angel Eyes coming...)

Yeah, I can see Angel Eyes as someone who’s perfected his gunslinger because his hand-to-hand isn’t so hot. Tuco’s the one who’d probably win in a straight bar brawl, but unfortunately for him that’s not the movie he’s in. 

[believerindaydreams]

a pathologic/GBU crossover

if I stopped to think about it, I wouldn’t have written it

This town needs healers. They’re not healers. 

“We should go,” Blondie says, studying the horizon out the window (a small shack, built of warped imported lumber and ill-made nails; no surprises here). No damned official interdict can stop them, if they choose to leave now; the prairie’s too wide, the routes of possible escape too many. “We should leave before they bring the army in.”

No one has said in so many words, that there are twelve days of epidemic to run before this town will be cleansed one way or the other. Nobody needs to. The knowledge of it weighs on them all like the foetid air, the stink of slaughtered cattle and diseased humans.

“It won’t work,” Tuco says, guzzling down twyrine as though he’s developed a taste for the stuff. “If we were still in New Mexico...but Blondie, my friend, we are a long way from home.”

“I saw a tumbleweed this morning, blowing in the wind. That man you killed was carrying escudos. We couldn’t have crossed the border in a single night.”

“Not that border.” The bandit grins at him, starts tearing into a dripping steak with his teeth. The platter before him is piled with fresh meat, half-cooked, barely civilised. “No.”

Tuco has a theory for what’s going on, which like many things about him is both simple and unfathomably wrong. 

Tuco thinks that they’re dead. 

And going by past experience, once his partner has an idea fixed in his head there’s no getting it out again- but not this time. 

 “Who are you trying to convince, Blondie?”

“You. Who else?”

Yourself, drifts across the conversation; and Blondie vows not to listen to it. 

“Look at you,” he argues. “Half-sozzled, eating everything you can scavenge, that doesn’t sound like any corpse I ever heard of.”

Tuco pauses, mid-chew; pries off a hunk of beef to throw at him. Its blood rolls off the table between them, staining a dark spot on the dusty toe of his boot. “You know what that man told me, before he died? That this is a place where the air itself will kill, you starve to death in a day without food. Lucky thing one of us is listening.”

“I have been listening, and haven’t heard anything that you couldn’t account for with high altitude and bad crops.” Blondie ignores the meat. If this plague does come from poisoned cattle, it’ll be safer to stick with hardtack, and at present he has no appetite anyway. “Which is another point. Everyone is talking English, except that nomadic tribe on the outskirts, so you were wrong about that-“

“Y esos bastardos no estan hablando en inglés. You hear English, I hear my mother tongue. You never heard that the devil can speak in tongues? Maybe that is what hell is,” Tuco says, suddenly contemplative. “You live here long enough, you turn into a devil yourself.“

There’s a point at which it’s easier to let his partner stay superstitious, than argue the point any longer. “We’re leaving now. Where’d you stable the horse?” Bad luck only having the one mount, after that last escapade, but if they give the beast its head and don’t go too quickly, they can still make it out of here. 

“There is no horse.“

“Someone stole it?” Horse thieves they can deal with, so long as no one’s actually ridden it out of town yet. 

“The man stole it,” Tuco returns. “So I killed him. Nothing wrong with that, they all agreed.” 

“Which they? What happened?” If they have no horse because his partner’s swapped it for a bag of magic beans, he’ll tie the next noose himself...

“People happened,” Tuco says succinctly, and belches. The edge seems off his appetite, now; he starts in on the second steak with something approaching decorum. “Hungry people. A whole mob who knew we rode in with a clean animal, no taint of plague, I didn’t have enough bullets left to shoot them all down. So we had a little sacrifice. More tender than I would have thought, but that’s a gelding for you.” 

“You mean this is our horse,” Blondie remarks, finally shoving a knife into the steak before him. Holds it up as though it’s a reward poster, to be read and understood and thrown away. “What did I do, to deserve a partner such as you?”

“It was a good trade. I got medicine powders, fruit, coffee, anything they could find to barter. Our choice of safe houses to sleep tonight. For the next twelve days we live like kings, or what passes for it in this town.”

“I would have ridden that horse straight out of here. Gone to find help, and not come back till I had it.” He would have. Tuco should have; they’re not so different as all that, in knowing when to leave a bad situation behind. “Don’t tell me it was because you worried about leaving me behind.”

“You think that would have stopped me getting out of this plague hole, if I had the choice? There was no choice. We were both already dead.”

“No....”

“So we might as well be as comfortable as possible,” Tuco concludes. “Are you going to eat that steak, or not?“

This, then, is the difference between them; that faced with the choice of saving a few lives now, or a whole town a little later, his partner has chosen to be soft now and hard later. The wrong decision, Blondie knows in his bones; he wouldn’t have made that mistake if it was up to him. 

He cannot help, though perhaps he can hinder; he cannot heal; most of all he cannot ride off into the sunsett and leave, and if anything was to make him believe all these bone-headed assurances about hell, it is the pinioned, aching fever in his very bones, as though the disease percolating through his body was itself responsible for keeping him here, pulling him downwards as firmly as any rope- 

when he falls off the table and hits the floor, the steak falls squarely across his thigh, so he knows Tuco will be along sooner or later to collect it. 

That happens. What surprises him is when, after putting the meat back on the table, Tuco is gentle with him; pulling him over to the desiccated tick, covering him with a blanket. Ripping open a packet of white powder, that stings in his mouth as though it acts by burning out infection and everything it encounters.

“If this is hell, why are you helping me?” 

(If this is hell, a fate he admittedly deserves, there should be no redemption nor relief.)

“I have a brother who wanted to be good. He cuts himself off from everyone, he doesn’t know when my parents start starving, he says rosaries in that monastery all day and never looks outside his own door. Good, you can shove that up-“ and Tuco gestures, with vicious rude intent. “The world was all hell anyway, but it was easier with a partner. You don’t die on me, Blondie, you hear? Better the devil I know...”

So it’s all self-interest, then. 

And it is that thought, the sure and safe awareness that there is a motive besides unreliable kindness to hold him and Tuco together, that comforts Blondie as the plague takes him. 

(Maybe they are in hell.)

(Maybe they aren’t.)

(Maybe it simply doesn’t matter.)