The Music of Dance to a Wylder Beat by Marilyn Barr

 

                                                                           

The Tale of McCurdy’s Corpse

by Laura Strickland

 

In my Wylder West story, A Wylder Undertaking, hero Angus (Gus) Wright is an undertaker, and a pretty decent fellow. He treats his clients and customers with respect, sets a fair price for his coffins, and always gives bereaved relatives time to pay. But a look back at the Old West proves not all undertakers were so scrupulous.

Not long after the turn of the last century, an outlaw called Elmer McCurdy had the bright idea of robbing a train. But the hold-up went badly, and McCurdy got shot during his escape. That, however, wasn’t the end of his troubled adventures. Not too surprisingly, his corpse went unclaimed, and he wound up in the hands of a most unscrupulous undertaker, indeed.

Looking to make a few bucks off McCurdy’s demise, the undertaker embalmed him with an arsenic solution and sold him as a curiosity. Of course, no one suspected he wasn’t in fact a curiosity, but an actual preserved corpse. I don’t know how widely-traveled McCurdy was in life. One would assume that, as an outlaw, he roamed the territory where he lived. But after he died, he made the rounds with a traveling carnival, and was featured in sideshows. “Step right up, folks! See the incredible petrified outlaw, straight out of the Old West!” Not until he’d traveled for some sixty years was the truth discovered, when part of poor McCurdy disintegrated, and real bones were discovered beneath the petrified flesh.

It makes you wonder about undertakers, doesn’t it? They truly do possess some scope for macabre activities. It also made me wonder about that arsenic solution. If it can do that good a job of preservation, I suspect only the deadly nature of the arsenic itself kept it from being widely used. If there’s any truth in karma, maybe the poisonous effects came back on the undertaker that sold McCurdy’s corpse.

I’m glad Wylder’s Angus Wright is an undertaker with a heart, upon whom a heroine can rely when she’s in a fix. If you want to hear the tale of A Wylder Undertaking, it’s just come out in Audio. Take a listen, and watch out for what you see in traveling sideshows.