anonymousao3writer

[anonymousao3writer]

Are you kidding me—Fuck it [deletes Colorado]

Cool [deletes Arizona]

New map coming when I can figure out how to wrangle this information.

[anonymousao3writer]

The Angel That Is Icarus — Chapter II. Obsession II.

Chapter Summary:

Dead Head Hills is a long way from anyone civilized, but supplies are running low, and Micah and John are itching to get out of Colter. There must be someone in these mountains willing to lend a hand.

Rating: Mature Characters: Micah, John, Arthur, original characters, O'Driscolls Warnings: Casual racism, mild animal abuse, implied rape Wordcount: 9,478

| AO3 Link | Masterlist |

It was during those six days in the derelict town of Colter that I realized what would destroy the Van der Linde gang.

It wasn’t the bitter cold, nor the brittle wind, nor the vicious fights. By then, it was already too late. The fractures had long since become chasms, the devotion insanity. Dutch was going to die believing he was Christ on the cross, that was clear from the moment I met him. His people would abandon him to his madness, or if they was as mad as he was, they would be hunted down and shot in the street like dogs.

No, we was long past the glory days, long past the crescendo. This was the end, orchestrated by none other than the mad god who started it all.

Obsession, my friend, is an infectious disease. And old Dutch—he was a leper.

“It’s not a waste-land,” said Dutch, “it’s an enterprise. People live in Canada.”

“People not like us. We—” Hosea’s cough was muffled behind the cabin’s walls. Over night it had become more of a breathy whistle than a burst; he just didn’t have enough air to pump the bellows. “We fringe folk endure a harder winter. We barely made it through this winter, you saw.”

“This winter was the worst one of our damn lives, Hosea!”

“And you think Canada’s gonna be any different?”

“Well, to start, we won’t be fringe folk for long.”

“Sure, sure, we’ll have a thousand-head remuda and a city in your name. They hand over the deed when you cross the border. Lovely people, Canadians, generous like you wouldn’t believe!”

This was usually the part where Hosea would jeer or cajole to signal the joke. These days, he didn’t bother.

Dutch’s response was tight enough to snap a bowstring. “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm.”

Hosea’s response was immediate. “I don’t appreciate your hot air.” Then, before Dutch could fire another shot, he said, “Go away. I need a nap.”

For a frail old man in failing health, Hosea had a whipcrack wit and tenacity to match, his beady eyes bright as a boy’s. I’d never once seen him lose an argument—only win it, or end it. He was relentless. After being so curtly dismissed, Dutch had no choice but to storm off with the last of his dignity, his thunderous footfalls diminishing as he retreated deeper into the cabin.

“Eavesdroppin?”

Arthur was plodding up the stairs to the porch, heavy as an ox and nearly as big. This time I didn’t jump.

“Those in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones,” I said, spreading my hands.

He moved to lean against the wall beside the front door and crossed his arms over his chest. “I never did read the Bible.”

Charitably, I decided not to correct him. “Never seen you do much readin at all,” I said.

“Never seen you do any.”

“Then you ain’t been payin attention.”

“Neither have you.”

With his shoulders set and that frown on his face, Morgan looked as though he was trying to guard the cabin from my ears. Sometimes he was as grim and monstrous as a Horseman of the Apocalypse—Death at the shoulder of Conquest. Other times he was so amusing, so strangely harmless, I couldn’t help but tilt my head and laugh at him.

I’ve been told I laugh like a baby. The sound always made Morgan’s hackles rise.

“‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,’” I said through my smile, “‘for they shall be satisfied.’ That’s Matthew, for the unenlightened.”

“Sure,” said Arthur flatly. “Does righteousness cover vengeance?”

“Hm?”

“I’ve seen your gun. ‘Vengeance is hereby mine.’”

“A man who reads guns, not Bibles. Funny feller, you is.” I cradled the grips of my revolvers, running my tongue along my teeth. “But a wise one, no mistake. Guns are honest; a book only lies. Ain’t no gods out there watchin over us, Arthur. No such thing as righteousness or satisfaction. There’s only us, and the people that want us dead. Maybe not now, but soon.”

Arthur shook his head and huffed. “Well that explains you.”

“It explains nothing,” I said slowly. “It’s just the way things are. Kill or be killed.” I stopped then with a chuckle, and held up my hands disarmingly. “You, uh, you have to do it, you know—to protect the people you love.”

“Oh, you believe in love, do you.”

I grinned an eyeless grin. “It hurts me how little you know me, Arthur, after all this time ridin together. It truly does.”

With a low hum I traced out a long line in the snow with my boot. The wood beneath was wet and rotten, abandoned for at least a decade. By the end of the next century, this would all be eaten away. There would be no sign that any one was ever here.

“Whatchu really think about this . . . all this?” asked Arthur. “This plan?”

He was testing me, always testing me, this feller. Looking for a tell, I suppose, or a vulnerability. Maybe he was emboldened by the glimmer of an honest thought that he’d lured out of me. But I was happy to disappoint him. I chose the most ridiculous lie that came to me, just to toy with him a little.

“Always wanted to go to Canada,” I sighed wistfully.

He set his jaw. “That so.”

“Sure.”

“The scenery?” he asked. “The weather? The ‘crystalline lakes’?”

“Heard they speak French up there. Beauuutiful language.”

“Oh, I’m sure it really calls to you.”

I laughed again. I could almost see Arthur’s skin crawl.

The cabin door swung open. Dutch leaned out with his forearms against the door-frame, ensnaring us in a dark, scrutinizing stare. My face fell at once. Arthur stayed where he was, planted at his master’s side.

“You boys havin fun here, chewin the rag on my porch?” asked Dutch, a cold edge to his tone. “Do you have nothin better to do?”

“Actually,” I said, stepping closer, “I was hopin to speak to you, boss. We need supplies, rather urgently.”

Dutch met my eyes. “I’m inclined to agree.”

“There’s a crick down thataway”—I gestured to the south—“so says Arthur. Thinkin along there’s the likeliest place to find some . . . generous neighbors.”

“So go and look.” Dutch flicked out his fingers. “You want an engraved invitation?”

A coal of anger flickered in my chest. I bowed my head and looked up at him past the brim of my hat. “I assume you don’t want no robbery.”

That made him pause. His eyes dug trenches into me, but they was busy with a hive of errant thoughts. Days of interruption from his usual meticulous grooming had left his beard rugged and his hair bedraggled—he didn’t cut a particularly charming figure, this mountain man more fur than man. But I had enough sense to know this weren’t the time for causing trouble we couldn’t run away from, and Dutch was never too proud to look desperate.

“You assume correctly,” he said at last. “We’re in dire straits. What we need are friends, Mr. Bell.”

“Right you are, Dutch, as always,” I said.

Morgan’s brow twitched. Dutch didn’t see it.

“Go and have a look,” he said, “but don’t do more’n that. Don’t make yourself known. Stay out of sight, if you can. I want to know who’s around: their trade, their means, their numbers. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll find some hospitality in these parts.”

“You know,” I said, glancing up at the clear blue sky, “I think our luck is on the turn.”

The smile he donned was as performative as a whore’s. Two actors, we was, warring like cockerels behind a script and a simper.

“Take John with you,” he said. “He needs somethin to do.”

As I turned to make my way down the rickety wooden steps, I caught a glimpse of Dutch bending toward Arthur. My ears pricked up.

“Arthur, I need you to get a hunting party together. Charles and Lamb. We need meat, as soon as possible. Mr. Pearson’s just informed me that the grain’s gone to rot.”

“Sure. But Lamb’s no good for that.”

“He ain’t?”

“Wouldn’t find a deer if he was standin on it. Can’t use a bow neither, he’ll scare off everything for miles with that blunderbuss he calls a gun.”

“Well, my mistake.”

“I can have him set up some snares, catch us some rabbits. He’s handy with traps, if we tell him where to put’m.”

“Better’n nothin, I guess. We need to get this old coot eatin good. The boy, too.”

“And Javier.”

“Oh, poor Javier. How is he?”

“He’ll be fine. At least half . . .”

Soon the crunch of my boots in the fresh snow was louder than the elegy drifting behind me. I waded ponderously toward the post-office, spinning my hope like a dime on the tip of my finger.

After the blizzard had died down in the early breaths of the dawn and the sky had cast off that terrible white weight, an atmosphere of calm resignation had fallen upon the camp. This was their future—they could see it now. A never-ending battle against the kind of cold that gets in your marrow. A lean hunger that devours you alive until there’s nothing left for the vultures. A life of fear, of being hunted, of living like prey.

There’s no one to blame when you die the death of beasts. It’s pathetic, apathetic. A bullet fired without thought or forethought. You can’t fight back; you can’t run. I was waiting for its next victim. Whether it was Hosea or Javier or delicate little Jack, it made no difference now—Dutch was the spirit of vindication when he was bested by a man, but when bested by Mother Nature, he was just like any other fool. Powerless. He wouldn’t be able to stand it.

I pushed into the post-office and wrinkled my nose. The heat from the potbelly stove had lifted the damp from the waterlogged wood and thickened the air with the clinging stink of mold. Sean startled, hiding a beer bottle behind his leg. Lenny was dozing in the corner, wedged upright between the wall and a bench, chin to chest and arms tucked around his middle. Lamb had climbed over the clerk’s counter to sleep in a nest of buckskin blankets and broken shelves. No one else was in there.

I checked my watch: twenty to two o’clock. I grunted impatiently. I thought about bringing Sean along instead, but then he said, “What’chew sniffin around in here for, y’greasy old hound?” and I barked at him so loud it shook the walls. Every one in the room flinched. Lamb was on his feet like a shot with his gun in his hand. Cackling, I slammed the door shut before he could shoot me.

Here’s my advice to you: if you must be a dog, be the Big Bad Wolf.

I ended up slogging all the way to the shotgun-house further up the thoroughfare to fetch John. Inside, the place was as somber as a dirge and reeked even worse than the post-office, sour with sweat amid the bitter of wet smoke. The child’s phlegmy cough rang out from the bedroom at the back, and a murmur of women’s voices followed. In the corner there seemed to be a funereal game of five-card stud happening at the dinner-table. When the old money-lender won the hand, he tipped back a shot of whisky. My throat went dry with envy.

John and Swanson was sitting by the fire beside Javier. Swaddled in blankets like a body in a shroud, the boy lay supine, his face pale and drawn, his brows tight with pain. He was shivering violently. In his hand he clutched the reverend’s cross; his lips moved in silent prayer. Above him, Swanson’s thready voice read from the Book of Psalms.

“‘You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me’—”

“Marston,” I broke in, “you and me, c’mon.”

Marston looked up at me, squinted a little. “Where we goin?”

“Meetin the neighbors.”

“We got neighbors?”

“Better hope so, or your greaser buddy will be our next meal.”

He considered it for a moment. He glanced in the direction of the bedroom—thinking, no doubt, about the woman who had trapped him in here. Weighing whether he preferred me or her.

“Fine,” he decided, and stood up. “Ain’t much left of my greaser buddy to eat, anyway.”

“Chinga tu madre,” said Javier weakly.

“Yeah, chingy ching.”

“You’re lucky I don’t have my gun on me.”

“Real frightening. You can’t even open your eyes.”

Javier lifted an eyelid by a fraction, but the light made him wince.

“Stop disturbing him,” scolded Swanson.

Marston nudged Javier’s foot with his own. “Don’t die while I’m gone.”

“Sure, brother.”

Toy Ann nearly hit me in the face with the front door as she came bustling in, a canteen held against her chest. I staggered back with a hand on my hat. She was a tiny, shriveled old thing, but she moved fast and had the stiff strength of a dry bone. The bearskin coat that dwarfed her frame was warning enough of that: a hunting trophy, she claimed. I believed her.

She paid me neither apology nor acknowledgment as she marched to Javier’s side.

“Reverend!” she shouted. Javier’s eyes snapped open, glazed and bewildered. The old bat was half deaf and half drunk. “Ga’blessy, Reverend, but get outta my way, he ain’t yet dead.”

“W-well,” stammered Swanson, raising his hands, “Miss—”

“Shew! Away now!” She shook the canteen as if trying to spook a pigeon. Crackerjack Cure-All sloshed menacingly against the metal. “Horble ginger fiend. I’ll hurt ye good, I swear I will!”

“Miss Baker!”

Marston hurried out the door before he got caught in the cross-fire of Grimshaw’s wrath. I dragged my feet after him, hoping for a glimpse of the carnage. More amusing than Toy Ann herself was seeing Grimshaw, so used to soft little girls broken in by a lifetime of violence, discombobulated by a senile liquor-loving witch.

The two of them was wrestling like a pair of polecats for the canteen when I finally tore myself away.

There was precious few supplies to go around in the cook-house, so Marston and I had to make do with a handful of rations and a top-up of the cheap swill Karen had bought in the tiny foothill town of Cathedral as we fled into Dead Head. I wasn’t overly concerned; Baylock was resourceful enough, and I could go a few days without a meal. The swill, I admit, was a sore point. I wished I still had a bottle or two of bourbon, but I never was good at pacing myself. I could want it now or I could want it later, but I’d never want it any more or less—that was my philosophy.

It’s just borrowin from the future, my daddy once said to me.

If he keeps it up, my brother whispered in my ear, his grin as sharp as a wire, maybe he’ll run outta future to borrow.

Patient in all things, that boy was.

Sometimes, when I thought about it too hard, I found it quite a feat of nature that every part of me, from my lumbering ape-like body to my singular man-hating habits, had crawled from the black yolk of my daddy’s blood. See, the Devil’s children have no mother. I may have been held in a womb for a time, but I was a cowbird in a sparrow’s nest, as alien to that flesh as another’s child. All glimpses of a stranger in my brother were invariably the woman’s touch I did not get; he was a graphophone spinning the last echoes of her existence in a waning web of wax. I don’t remember her, but I remember the finger-prints she left in his mold. What a different man I would have been, if I got my share.

Before I’d even left the cook-house I’d already swigged a mouthful of whisky. Quite a feat of nature.

In the cavernous livery stable, Morgan and the Indians were already saddling their horses. Dark eyes glittering, Lamb looked up from the spool of fishing-line he was winding around his hand.

“Afternoon, gents,” he said cheerfully.

John picked through the stalls in search of Benjamin. “You still owe me a pack of cigarettes,” he said.

“Do I?”

“Don’t play dumb. I won it fair and square.”

Lamb stuffed the line into his saddle-bag and hoisted himself onto his horse, holding the crown of his felt gambler. He ran a finger neatly along its pencil-curl brim. His nap—and its rude interruption—seemingly hadn’t put a dent in his careful poise. He looked as well rested and high spirited as ever, not a hair loose from his braids.

“Remind me when I get back,” he said.

“Well d’you have one on you now?” asked John. “I’m headin out.”

Lamb leaned forward with his hands folded over the pommel, beaming like a cherub. “You run outta cigarettes?”

“Would you just gimme the damn pack you owe me?”

“When I get back,” Lamb assured him.

“He’s a damn liar,” I said. “He doesn’t even smoke.”

John squinted. “Whad’you mean he don’t smoke?”

“Have you ever seen him smoke? No? Cause he don’t.”

Lamb set his clinging smile upon me. “This one must have been raised with wolves. Scared me half to death before you came in, Arthur.”

Arthur heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Whad he do, bite you?”

“Barked at me. Woof woof.” Lamb smothered a chortle against the back of his hand.

“Yeah, well,” said Arthur, climbing onto the Morrigan, “I wouldn’t worry. His bark’s worse than his bite.”

They was laughing at me, to my face. My blood boiled in my veins, motherless and sinful as the blood of a demon. I abided many things, but I could not abide this. Every muscle in my body coiled tight.

The hunting party rode for the doors. Quietly, I leered. Then as Lamb passed me I lunged forward and snapped my teeth at him with near-manic rage. His hand darted to his gun. The look on his face was no longer angelic. An image came to my mind of women and children strung in a cloud of flies from a Christmas tree. I stepped back.

He continued to watch me until he was a silhouette in the light at the mouth of the stable. Then he turned his horse to follow Arthur’s, and disappeared from view.

“You two’re just as strange as each other,” said John.

For hours, Spider Gorge led us on a twisting chase down Dead Head’s spine. Our wretched town of sticks and stones had long since faded away, and before us rolled a river of dark trees pooling in the saddle between the mountain-tops. White dripped from granite flanks like semen, daubed thick as grave dirt in the wish-bone of forked thighs. We rode until my lips were bitten numb and my fingers and toes were cadaver stiff and the sun had dipped behind the range on our right.

That was when we came upon a drop in the slope. The river galloped down into a vast basin that stretched out like a lake below us, awash with blue shadow against the rim of fire-lit peaks, dense with spruces and firs as old as the earth.

I found it hard to believe none of this was on Arthur’s county map. But I wasn’t going to question him. Typically, Arthur was our navigator. He could figure out where we was faster than anyone else, and that was quite the asset for a gang that lived on blank spaces and unmarked roads. Hosea called him “goose brained” for the way that a goose in the air is never lost. It was a trait the two of them shared, and Charles as well, but they couldn’t commune with a map like Arthur could.

Meanwhile, I’d unfolded my map and could’ve believed we was in Montana.

“Other side just over that way, then?” asked John, drawing Benjamin up beside me.

“One would assume,” I said ambiguously. Dead Head Hills was nothing but an awkward smear on this map, anyway, drawn by a cartographer who surely ain’t seen the place; no surprise I couldn’t understand it. I folded it back up and slipped it into my saddle-bag. Less ambiguously, I said, “There’ll be some one in among all these trees, I have no doubt.”

“You think?”

“I said, ‘I have no doubt,’ didn’t I?” I snapped my fingers at him. His eyes narrowed. “Pay attention. See that gap there?” I pointed to a spot in the basin where the tops of the trees seemed to bow and give way. “Must be a lake.”

Lake and trees meant grass, when there wasn’t two feet of snow, and the ramparts of the range would shield this basin from the brunt of the wind. It made for better living than our town, that was certain.

“Good enough,” said Marston. “Let’s find somewhere to make camp.”

I unfastened the shovel wrapped in my sugan from behind my saddle and tossed it to him. “You set up camp,” I said. “I’ll find us a rabbit.”

Marston’s nose wrinkled incredulously. “You ain’t no kind of hunter.”

“What do you know about me, boy?” I sneered. “I been huntin since your mama was wipin drool offa your chin.”

He juggled with that for a moment. He damned near thought out loud, this kid—I could see the scales tipping in his head, wavering between the boyish poles of obstinacy and disinterest.

This time, disinterest won.

“Whatever you say,” he said with a shrug. “Watch out for grizzlies, I guess.”

As the blue of the sky deepened from a lake shore to an ocean, and Venus appeared as a spark on the horizon, I rode Baylock into the woods. He was beginning to droop under me, I could feel it; three days of meager feed, a heavy burden and enough plowing to drain a work-horse had taken its toll. He tossed his head in half-hearted protest, loath to wade through this sinking snow. So I offered him a beet—one of only four Pearson had spared me—and chatted to him for a while about this and that. The trees closed in around us, a suspicious crowd of dark-clad strangers listening intently to the chuff of his hoofs and my aimless muttering.

I dismounted when the fire on the range was a smoldering red. The snow came nearly up to my knees, powdery as dandelion seed. Before me, the tell-tale track of a rabbit tunnel traced an endless snake round the trees. I flipped a coin, and it landed heads. I forged ahead, swinging my gun out like a dowser.

The air dropped into a bone-chill as I shuffled through a deepening dark on the rabbit’s trail. I beat at bushes and knocked on trees, my eyes swiveling for movement, and now and then I paused to listen, head tilted. It was a quiet world up here, quiet and still, with only the long exhale of the atmosphere for company, and the occasional stippled patter of snow falling from the boughs when a breeze shouldered through.

I had been walking for at least a quarter of an hour before I caught wind of another warm body. A bush to my left broke into a shudder, unprompted by the air. I looked over at it; the rabbit tunnel crept right over its feet. Leaning low, I skulked toward it, tucking my hair behind an ear.

Close enough to touch, the bush twitched. I shifted my weight and kicked it hard. A jack-rabbit exploded out of the snow like a fish from water. My gun hand shot out, almost without thought. Cocked the hammer, pulled the trigger. The crack of the bullet sent birds bursting from the evergreens. The rabbit dropped down in a heap.

As I lifted it up, its legs jerked feebly.

“Bet you feel reeeal stupid now, don’t you?” I said, and wrenched its neck until the spine crunched in my fist.

It was a lean little snowshoe rabbit of three pounds or less; not much of a meal for one man let alone two, especially with a bullet mangling its shoulder and breast. But the sun was low enough now that the snow was darker than the sky. So I slung the rabbit over my shoulder and trudged back to Baylock.

Wasn’t hard to find Marston’s camp; the smoke from his fire was thick and black with damp, curling high above the treetops. The flickering flames was stark from a mile away.

When I could see John’s face in the firelight, watching my approach, I flaunted my kill and declared, “Never let it be said I don’t do my part for you folks!”

“Barely a mouthful on that thing,” said Marston. “Forgive me if I’m not impressed.”

“That’s some talk comin from you, Marston, some talk indeed. Now it’s your turn to be useful.” I threw him the rabbit—he let it land ungracefully in the snow beside him. “Skin it.”

“How bout a ‘please’?”

“C’mon, wifey, don’t make this difficult. I caught the food, you skin the food.”

Without further protest, Marston pulled a knife from his belt and resigned himself to the task. Times like these it surprised me that, for all he played at surliness, he was quite a well-trained boy. Waspish and stubborn by the handful, sure, but lazy he was not. He’d dug out a wide pit to make this camp-site and packed the snow down nice and tight, and set up the tent on his own to boot. He’d already laid the ground beneath his ground-cloth with fresh spruce boughs. His fire was built to last. He knew how to survive; he just did what he was told.

Despite the back-talk, Marston rarely acted on any meaningful thought. One might get the impression his thoughts ran no deeper than what he could piss out in one stream. But I’d seen flashes of intelligence in his eyes that rarely made it to his mouth: creeping doubts, unasked questions, silent disapproval—he was more of a cynic than he let on.

Which is why, when I asked him “So how’s Javier lookin?” around a mouthful of gristle, I knew he’d tell me exactly what he thought.

“Don’t know,” he said. “He might die.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Fever ain’t let up once.” John peeled a thin ribbon of flesh from a tiny bone. Picked at it distractedly. “He’s all burned up inside. Says he feels like he’s on fire, and his head’s killin him. In a few days, bullet might be a mercy.”

“Toy Ann ain’t makin no difference?”

He scoffed. “That old hag’s more likely to poison him than fix him.”

“Real shame.”

And it was. Ironic for a revolucionario, but Javier was a good soldier. A man of Bibles, not guns—had long since twisted each passage into a hangman’s knot to convince himself he was doing the right thing. And he’d keep on rewriting them as many times as Dutch asked him to.

“Never know what’ll get you in the end,” I said. “Some of us go down fightin—others, they just go to waste.”

John scraped at his teeth with the needle-point of his rabbit bone. “Any one ever tell you you’re a damn lizard?”

“Just being honest with you. It’s a big, scary world out there, son.”

“Don’t call me that. In fact, don’t talk to me.”

I laughed lowly. He was fun. Of them all, he was my favorite. I tapped out a cigarette and passed it to him. He didn’t thank me.

After another half-hour of smoking and sipping at our whisky, we crept into the tent to get our frozen asses off the snow. John stretched out across his bed, lanky as a fawn, then turned on his side and curled into a ball, resting his head on his saddle and his hat on his ear.

I leaned over him, grinning. “Cold there? Wanna cuddle, sweetheart?”

“Rather die,” he said, his sandpaper voice muffled. “Ain’tchu gonna sleep?”

“Already had one.”

“Jesus, you really ain’t human, whatever you are.”

The long night waned in whispers: sharp breaths of wind pushed past the trees; animals shuffled in their holes to get at hidden grasses and strips of bark; the horses bickered in quiet whickers as they searched for a spot to graze. I heard a lone wolf inspire a choir of scattered howls. I heard a fox catch some kind of varmint and carry it away. The little thing screamed like a murder in a distant alley before its head was smothered in the grip of slavering jaws. I went off to fetch some firewood, and came back to find another fox nosing at my knapsack. Its brown eyes caught on mine; it bolted into the darkness.

I tended the fire. I cleaned my guns. I smoked a few more cigarettes. My breath was a cloud of mist and fume. This was my last personal pack—I’d have to take from the communal stores soon. The thought was repellent. Tallied in Pearson’s note-book like a beggar in a bread line.

I was starting to shiver badly, so I burrowed into my sugan and pressed myself against Marston’s back anyway. He wasn’t faring much better.

“Said I’d rather d-die,” he muttered, but didn’t move to shake me off.

“Ain’tchu e-ever built a lean-to?” I hissed, cupping my nose in my gloves. “This is path-thetic, Marston.”

“Shut up. I’m sleeping.”

All angles and edges, he was. Why Abigail would want this man warming her bed, I had no idea.

Long before the first ember of dawn touched the sky, I was shaken from my spidery half-dreams by a fragment of bird-song.

My joints were locked. My fingers and toes were numb. Every movement was like scraping at rusty hinges with a fork. Marston was so deeply asleep he didn’t stir as my frozen agony wrenched a low, wounded noise from me. When had I gotten too old for this life? Maybe I’d just grown too used to the balmy Rolling Plains and shed all my years of roughing it in the Rockies.

It took me at least a half-hour to peel myself away from John and get out of the tent. I was hobbling like Uncle, the soles of my feet cramping something awful. As I rekindled the fire and put some water on to boil, I thought again about Abigail and that sour little face of hers, scowling at me like I was a lemon she could taste from three yards away. What a fight it’d be if I told her to rub my feet. A good fight. A worthy fight. I wondered how long it would take to wear her down—or how much it would cost me.

The moment I began drip-brewing coffee with an old cheese-cloth, John sprang to life. He turned onto his back and yawned. He rolled his ankles, then sat up and rolled his shoulders.

“Why the Hell’re you doin that?” he demanded, squinting up at me. “What the Hell time s’it? Ain’t even morning yet.”

I checked my watch. “Four o’clock,” I said in a sing-song, just to irritate him.

“Four o’clock?” John put his head on his knees and groaned. “Why in . . . Ugh. It’s damn freezing.”

“Whine, whine, whine. That all you people can do?” I prodded at the fire with a stick, turning over an ash-bellied branch. “You’re gonna need thicker skin if you plan on survivin Canada.”

John groaned again. “Give me some coffee, right now.”

“Since you’re awake, you can finish makin it.” I stood up on creaky knees. I couldn’t feel my feet.

While I looked them over to make sure I wasn’t about to lose any toes, John poured us some coffee and heated up a can of beans. He settled down next to me beneath the eaves of the tent, and we wolfed the beans like it was our last meal, both battling for the bigger share. It went down so fast I burned my mouth and couldn’t taste a thing, but it was one of the best breakfasts of my whole hick life. Right up there with Domino Crake’s hoe-cakes that got all us Ogle–York Boys through that terrible March in Dakota. The heat bloomed inside me like a new life. I took my gloves off and cradled my mug of coffee in frigid palms, and I closed my eyes as I drank, breathing the warm steam into my lungs. If I had some one rubbing my sore feet too, all this would even be worth the trouble.

“Say,” I said, sliding a cold knife into my peace, “that A-Abigail of yours . . .”

Marston didn’t hesitate. “She ain’t mine.”

“So you wouldn’t mind if I”—I cleared my throat, pointedly—“had a slice?”

“You can sure try, but after whatchu did to Jenny, I don’t think any o’the women’ll give you a slice.”

All the warmth drained from my veins in the wake of a wash of ice.

“I—did—not—kill—Jenny.”

“Sure,” said John breezily, “I don’t think you did. I think she just saw you comin and reckoned Hell was the better deal. Can’t say I blame her.”

My fingers tightened around the mug. “Very funny. That’s very funny, Marston.”

“Struck a nerve, did I?”

“Not at all. My nerves ain’t so easily struck.”

“F’you say so.”

“I do.”

I knew what they all thought of me. To say they wasn’t fond of me would be putting it mildly. Sure, that hadn’t mattered when I thought I’d have the Blackwater money halfway to Nevada by now. But things had spiraled far, far beyond my control, and these folks had known me long enough that they didn’t believe any other façade. They wasn’t convinced by amiability, nor by threats, nor even by unfailing competence. I was the beast who put their god in my pocket, who killed young women and scattered their brains for my morbid pleasure. This weren’t no church offering penance to sinners, no matter what Dutch said. They would make it my Hell. They would test my patience.

Our silence spanned hours as anger stoked a new heat inside me. The sun began to rise somewhere behind the mountains, bringing a slow blue out of the sky. It was then that we could see the coal-smoke demon of unlit clouds looming in the north, heavy with another storm. We continued to say nothing. I suppose there wasn’t much to say about it.

We pulled down our camp and saddled our horses. It looked like they’d dug out a few shallow grazing patches, so they wasn’t starving, but I gave Baylock a beet to calm his nerves. The encroaching storm was unsettling him.

When John and I finally mounted up, he wheeled Benjamin toward me with black in his eye.

“I’m sicka lookin at you,” he said. “You head on down to the lake and I’ll go up the ridge there, look for a vantage point.”

I followed his gesture to the low, snowy border of crests in the west. From here, they wasn’t much farther than three or four miles.

“Running away, is you?” I said nastily. “Fraid I’ll shoot you for mouthin off?”

“You still on about that? Jesus.” John huffed. Would have been a laugh, if he were smiling. He weren’t. “Can’t even remember what we was talkin about. Give it a rest.”

This dirty game, then. Warring with my nerves this morning, then. I dropped it like a live wire.

“What d’you expect you’ll see in that situation?” I asked, jabbing my thumb at the clouds.

“Anything but your damn face,” he said. “Meet you back in town. Adios.”

That was all. He spun Benjamin around and urged him into a brisk chop, carving a long gash in the snow as he rode away.

I sneered at his retreating back. “Keep that up, Marston, and I’ll start gettin the impression you don’t like me!”

If the stubborn ass wanted to be in the worst place possible during a blizzard just for a sulk, that was his right. He had the tent, but it wouldn’t be of use to either of us if we was caught outside to-night. I, on the other hand, had the coffee. To the victor go the spoils.

Baylock and I soon met with Spider Gorge once more, wending a slow march to its gurgling dirge. The dark Hell-smoke became a high gray fog. The morning sun lit white candles on the ripples and rocks. I tried whistling a lively tune to raise my mood, but now I was thinking about Jenny.

Red-lipped Jenny, balanced on a knife’s edge.

That girl was a fine piece, with gossamer hair and a storm in her eyes, and wide hips that swung when she walked. Young, too—very young. She had that sweet and sad look about her, but it was only a look.

I liked her. She was the only one of those tight cunts who’d actually fuck me. And what a dirty little thing she was. Anything that could fit in her mouth went there. I was glad she didn’t care much for kissing because I wouldn’t have kissed her with a barge-pole.

And then I guess I killed her. Just like I guess I killed that girl on the ferry. It was a very simple equation with these people, you see; they liked each other well enough, but they didn’t like me, so I was the pen that wrote their tragedy. I was the gun in Dutch’s hand, and the bottle in Jenny’s. The bullet, and the rock.

Hell, did it irk me to be blamed for what others did.

Whether it was my black mood or the white storm, Baylock really began to chafe after we’d put in the first twisting mile. His ears was pinned back, his teeth working hard at the bit. He was prone to fits of temper, this boy, and they was nothing pretty for the man on his back.

I leaned forward and met his eye. “What is your problem? Knock it off.” I laid my hand on the hard muscle of his neck. He shook me off, grumbling under his breath. My anger writhed behind my ribs. I dug in my spurs for a pinch sharp enough to make him twitch, and he jerked his head up and quirked his ears, cowed like a child at the crack of the switch.

“That’s better,” I said. “You fight me, you always lose. Your memory ain’t so good, kid.”

He was listening to me now, bashfully, waiting for reassurance that I wouldn’t do it again. But I didn’t much feel like reassuring him this time.

We rode on in silence.

As the downward slope gave way to the flat at the bottom of the basin, the storm swept the sun into its palm and dusted us with puffs of fresh snow, soft and fragile as down-feathers. But the gentleness, as ever, was not long to last. The flakes became heavy and flew like locusts against my back. Struck me hard as hail-stones, clung to my coat. The wind rose into a biting one, a burrowing one, chewing through me and spreading an icy seed. I turned up my collar. I tucked my hair into it. A sudden gust lashed over the river and lathered the water and whipped my hat clean off. My hand sprang out and caught it before my head noticed the loss.

Any man who has weathered a blizzard knows this feeling. The mind becomes startlingly clear. The senses narrow to the orchestra. Crunching hoofs—a howling roar—a thousand voices—a river of white snakes—now a bludgeon—now a scythe. No gaps. No lull. I shivered as if trying to rattle out of my skin. Baylock’s heat was buried too deep beneath his winter coat to warm my locked legs.

I thought briefly and vindictively of Marston, up there on the ridge that was nothing more than a white line on a white sky, thrashed senseless, I knew, for his struck nerves. He got what fools got. I hoped it killed him.

The forest of spruce and fir thickened as I rode, barely-there ghosts in a white-breath mist, and they pressed harder against the banks of the river until we was weaving winding loops around their skirts. The wind shook the snow from their dark arms, and the rush of locusts made new sleeves of their own wings, thin and silken as evening-gloves. A raven snapped past, capsized, fluttering like a widow’s dress, and disappeared in the black tangle ahead. Baylock flinched and lurched to the right. I could hardly move my fingers to tug the reins; I could only trust his sleight-of-limb.

It was like I was riding the sky. We leaped on clouds in a cavalry choreography. We knew none of the steps and couldn’t catch the rhythm—at any moment we might slip straight through and fall, fall, fall to the far-away plains below. I was grinning like a madman, feeling perhaps as the wind does: spread over everything until scarcely there at all. No one was watching me, no one was there—except, now, you.

I filled my lungs and began to sing.

For three hours we rode hard in a near-blind haze. The wind settled once or twice, as if the sky had run out of air, before picking up again to flog the trees with a vengeance. I was beginning to doubt that any one would actually live here, a stone’s throw from a mine that didn’t turn out and little else. Even the hardiest mountain man would find himself under six feet of snow on this late spring day, to say nothing of the scornful winters that must try their damnedest to rid this place of life.

But as misgivings circled my head, the river opened out and the white curtain parted to unveil a wind-whipped lake. It was not as vast as I had expected, but the clearing was twice as vast, stripped bare of trees to make at least ten hectares of unbroken snow. A rough-hewn cabin leered at me across the water, and a smatter of sheds trembled here and there, exposed to the prowling storm. In the distance I thought I saw a stable or a barn—a big, two-story structure, of a size to house about fifty head of cattle and a hay-loft as might just feed a herd over the snow months.

I could hardly believe my eyes. I brought out my binoculars and swept them slowly over the collection of buildings laid out like wooden dolls in this middle-of-nowhere tableau, checking for a pulse, or the ghostly shimmer of a mirage. There was yellow light dancing in the cabin windows. Long black shadows flitted in and out. Long enough for men. Many. No children.

Some strange mountain men they was, or no mountain men at all. Rustlers was my first guess, bootleggers my second. Whatever it was, it weren’t no honest outfit. Not this secluded, this hard to get to. They was hiding. Same as us.

The wind hastened and the snow curtain snapped shut. The ranch disappeared in the flurry. I hissed in frustration and put my binoculars away. Turning Baylock around, I folded us back into the weave of the tree-line and crept us quietly round the lake. Laced with cobweb cracks and delicate as glass, ice skirted its serrated edges like the hard marble skin that comes before the black char of frost-bite.

When we had moved as close to the buildings as the tree-line allowed, I drew us to a stop and peered once again through my binoculars. The cabin was twenty paces to the south or more, and the blizzard gushed around my back to wash the noise away, but it looked as though the men inside was having quite the party. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them, guzzling drink, flapping their gums, dancing round the dinner-table. There was a feller with a fiddle and another with a flute, and another on the floor was beating at a drum. They was rough men, unwashed, dressed all in thief black but for the garish pop of grass-green: vests, neckties, bandanna handkerchiefs, whatever they had fit beneath their weather-worn overcoats. Six-shooters hung at their hips. Something twitched at the back of my mind, some dull, half-formed suspicion.

If there had been generous neighbors here, they was here no longer.

I had no time to consider this.

The man with the fiddle lowered his bow and looked straight at me. Every one in the room turned to peer through the window—twenty sets of eyes met mine, twenty palms met the grip of a gun, twenty paces from where I sat at the edge of the trees holding a pair of damned binoculars. My blood ran cold. Baylock’s ears swiveled; he shuffled his feet.

The cabin door opened, splashing a hot glow onto blue snow. A figure stepped out, bathed in firelight and wind, and beckoned with one hand. The other lazily stroked his holster.

At twenty paces, he would probably have missed me. Hell, at twenty paces, I would probably have missed him. I could have spun round and galloped into the woods right then. But it wouldn’t have made no difference, in the end. And it ain’t what I did.

I kept my binoculars trained on the figure outside as I urged Baylock toward him. Sallow against the flames, his face was sculpted of ragged angles and deep furrows, stamped with a hawk nose violently crooked in the bone. Stringy hair brushed the lavish fur collar of his coat, smearing grease on the back of a timber wolf. A snakeskin band circled the crown of his black hat. Gold buttons lined his black vest, a gold fob dangling from his pocket. Around his neck, a green tie. A predator with expensive tastes: a mirror image of another man I knew.

This was their leader, there was no question of that.

I dismounted. I walked until I could see the whites of his eyes. I stopped. The man did not move.

“Hey, uh . . .” I raised a hand slowly. “Nice—Nice to meet you. This your ranch?”

“It is now.”

His voice rasped and crackled like dry leaves. He was nearly whispering. The wind howled between us.

“I-I can’t quite hear you,” I said.

The snake-hat stranger smiled a thin-lipped smile. Looked a little like a snake himself, skin stretched taut over his skull and sunk into his eye sockets like a mask.

“Then you’d better come a little closer,” he said. His fingers flexed around his gun. Peacemaker, by the look of it. Maybe a Cattleman. Clean grain, polished varnish, well cared for and well used.

Now I was starting to realize my mistake. But it was too late to make my escape; I stepped forward until the heat of the fire caressed my snow-pinched cheeks. Until he was close enough to touch me.

“You buy this property?” I asked carefully.

“Yes, few days ago. Oh, it was a steal, I’ll tell you.” His smile broadened, and I saw that his eye-teeth was sharp as a cat’s. “Well, seemed like it at the time, anyway. Maybe shoulda seen the writin on the wall. Ranch in the middle o’nowheres, and on a year like this, huh?” He whistled lowly, rocking on his heels. “Unseasonal, this. You bin up here much, boy? Up in the Grizzlies?”

“Once or twice,” I said.

“Derned unseasonal, ain’t it?” The snake-hat stranger spoke with a lilt of knowing humor, as if talking around a secret I was supposed to know. That twitch in the back of my head was growing. “Had quite the die-up just now. Just a few days past. Went from eighty head to roundabout sixty, I bet.”

“Eighty head? Whatcha got in there?”

“Sheep. Sixty now.”

“My condolences.”

He hummed with his tongue between his teeth, half agreeing, half amused. “Where’s my manners?” he said, and stepped aside with a flourish. Twenty pink-faced swine let up a raucous cheer at the sight of me. “Y’wonna come in, my young friend? Lookin so cold and forlorn out there. S’warm inside. We got drink. Women.”

“Women?” I couldn’t see any women.

“My boys, they get bored. Plumb borin up here. Don’tcha think?”

This dance was really something. He was toying with me and I was letting him. There surely had to be a tactful way to finagle his intentions without stepping on his toes. There always was.

“How much did it cost you?” I asked.

“The women?” he countered innocently.

“The ranch.”

“Oh, really, not much.” He stuck his thumbs in his gun belt. “Couple a’bullets.”

His smile didn’t falter. I returned one quickly, winding the stiff strings of my cheeks as tight as they would go, to thank him for his frankness.

“Some trouble for a ranch in the middle o’nowhere,” I said.

“Naw,” he scoffed. “Believe me, friend, this were a incidental purchase. A diversion on the trail of much deadlier game.”

“Sure. I hear the grizzlies is wakin up from the long nap.”

His mouth twisted suddenly into a bare-toothed snarl, and he bent forward at the waist, breathing a puff of sour whisky over my face. “That’s just it,” he hissed with a wild glint in his eye, “I’m lookin for one in particular. Quite the beast, or so they say. Think I may have found him, you know. He ain’t far, ain’t far at all.”

The twitch surged to the front of my head, plain as day. I tried to swallow, but my throat had grown a lump. He’d gave up the jig. He’d gave it up, so I was dead.

“It just occurred to me that you ain’t introduced yourself,” I said thinly.

“Well,” said the stranger, “neither has you, and you came to my door.”

I gave him my brother’s name. I always did, when I felt I was speaking to the last man who would see me alive.

“Missster Belll.” He sounded it out like he was appraising the flavor. He extended his hand, and his smile slithered back. “Colm O’Driscoll.”

It rang a hollow knell. Of course I knew that name. You might think of him now as Dutch van der Linde’s legendary rival, the creature who left America’s last dreamer broken hearted and filled the cracks with black hate. But he was much more than that. A ruthless savage. A bogeyman with a hundred faces. Bandit-lord of a sprawling empire, the largest and slipperiest of its kind—robbers, killers, rapists, head-hunters. He was known then as the Irish Butcher: a forcemeat epithet perched atop a mountain of unprintable brutality. He and Dutch, they cracked each other.

Shoot first. That was my daddy’s remedy for fear. Shoot first, and go down shootin.

I did not shoot Colm O’Driscoll; I took his hand and I shook it.

“Colm O’Driscoll,” I laughed. My voice was remarkably steady over the rabbit-beat of my heart. “Colm O’Driscoll, the O’Driscoll, in the flesh. Well, I have heard a great deal about you, old feller. Now you’re a man who knows how to run a tough crew and make some real money. Not like all these modern-day molly-coddlers as carry parasites and invalids on their backs.”

“A man after my own heart!” crowed Colm O’Driscoll. “You feed the fleas, you get the mange. I’ve always said that.”

“I like that,” I said. “Very wise.”

“You got experience with such molly-coddlin outfits, then?”

I swallowed. “Some.”

“Is that right, is that right. Oh, I know the type, I do.” He ran a hand down his timber wolf collar, all the way from his breast to his navel. His hand stopped there, just above his gun, and stayed. “Tell me, then: what do you do with them?”

“I . . .”

I could tell. My gaze flicked to the twenty cutthroats over Colm’s shoulder, blank faced now, fingers twitching at their sides. The fiddler was sitting with an ankle crossed over his knee, plucking the high string to the metrical rhythm of dripping water. I had a sense for these things. I could tell that my answer now would decide whether I lived or died.

“I try to help,” I said lowly, “I really do, but you can’t get it through to that kinda people. They’re too—too soft hearted, they just can’t do—what—needs—to—be—done. They go on like this until they get themselves killed: them and their fleas.”

Colm’s eyes twinkled with delight. “You sly dog,” he said. “You sly little dog. He don’t work on you, do he? Oh, you gon break his poor little heart.”

He reached out and grasped me by the shoulder. Chin raised, he looked down his nose to reassess me.

“Mr. Bell”—and he smiled his snake smile at me, colder than the snow—“I think we could be friends.”

I shuddered under the leper’s touch.

“I am not a man who hides, Hosea.”

“Let’s be honest, you’re not a man who has much sense at all. What do you think we’re doing right now, huh, you think we ain’t hiding? You think this is freedom?”

“This is—”

“We’re running and hiding, that’s what we’re doing. We’re running and hiding just like we’ve always done until you get it in your head to do somethin reckless and then we’ll be runnin and hidin again, and don’t you—”

“Hosea—”

“—say you’re not—”

“Be quiet, be qu—Which is it, Hosea? What do you want? You don’t wanna run, you don’t wanna fight, you—”

“Yes I want neither! Oh, shocking, I know. I’ve had enough—”

“Let me—”

“—turn around, and—”

“Let me—”

“—a real—”

“Hosea, let me ask you something. When did you start thinkin so small?”

“Thinkin small? I’m thinkin long term. I’m thinkin where this sorry bunch is gonna end up by the turn of the century. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m not fond of this pretense any more, Dutch. I’m gonna die up here. You’ll be sorry when it comes to that. Or maybe you won’t, I don’t even know what you want any more. Maybe I’m just holding you back and you can’t wait till I’m gone, I can’t tell.”

“How can you say that? After all we’ve been through together, after all I’ve done for you.”

“You’ve saved my life a thousand times, old friend, but now you’re going to kill me.”

A pause. The only sound inside was Hosea’s whistling lungs; outside, the wailing wind.

“We’re gonna get you down from these mountains, head back down to Cathedral. All we need is some more supplies and Toy Ann’ll be able to fix you somethin up for that cough.”

“Toy Ann? You’re gonna stake my life on Toy Ann? Just yesterday she sank straight to the bottom of a snowdrift and it took three men and a rope to get her out.”

“She was drunk.”

“Exactly, you buffoon, she was drunk.”

“Hosea, will you calm down?”

“We got a little boy with us, Dutch. Remember? He’s been coughing himself the past week. We’re not built for this no more. This is what family is like—you make concessions. You change your way of life. It’s time.”

“We are. I mean, we will.”

“You know what I mean!”

“You want us to succumb to civilization, settle down in the suburbs of some rinky-dink town and grow old and fat together? This ain’t that kinda family. We don’t back down from livin just because they tell us we oughta be dyin.”

“It’s our responsibility to keep these people safe.”

“I offer these people liberation, and I give them what I promise. That is why they follow me. I ain’t backin down.”

A pause.

Then, firmly: “Fine, Dutch. Fine.”

“Do you have my back?”

“You know I’ll follow you to Hell if I must.”

“Well we ain’t goin there. Where we’re goin, we’ll be the richest men in the world.”

Oh, you see, vain men ain’t hard to please. Not at all.

I rapped my knuckles on the cabin door.

“Dutch,” I called. “I found something.”

[anonymousao3writer]

The Angel That Is Icarus — Chapter I. Obsession I.

Chapter Summary:

It’s a long way to Canada’s crystalline lakes from the southern plains of West Elizabeth, but Dutch has a plan like a dog has a bone, and he’s determined to get his people there alive or dead—that is, until they’re thwarted by Pinkertons and a blizzard in the Grizzlies West.

Rating: Mature Characters: Micah, Arthur, Dutch, Hosea, the Van der Linde gang, new gang members Warnings: Character death, slurs, casual racism Wordcount: 5,076

| AO3 Link | Masterlist |

My old man lived by maxims. Nothing fancy, not like the navel bore-hole of Dutch’s proselytizing—nothing much longer than a few choice words. But it was a book of principles, nonetheless.

If you’ve heard anything of that famed and fierce animal, this may strike you as peculiar. What compass drives a man to cut a bloody swath across four states and end as a bloody smear dragged a mile behind a Mexican bandito’s horse? These was random acts, surely. Nothing so vicious could be done through the faculty of reason. But then, people have that instinct to deny any suggestion of regular, mundane humanity in cold-blooded killers for fear that it may bring us closer to them.

The truth is, we are all the same. We all want the same things, we all share the same blood, we all think the same thoughts. All creatures is creatures of habit; what makes us human is that we justify our habits with beliefs. Even old Micah Bell.

I made it a point to despise everything my daddy left me after his demise, but I must admit, some of those maxims of his have stuck with me and guided my hand all these years.

My favorite was just this: obsession is vanity. I always thought it a fine irony for a man so obsessed with himself he must’ve canceled out the sentiment. But that somehow made it all the truer. He put that weapon in my hands when my flesh was still soft and never noticed how well I understood it because I used it first on him.

That’s the thing with beliefs; they’re stronger than the man who believes them. This one was strong enough to raise me, clothe me, put food in me, spare me the rod and point it at my brother’s yellow belly.

It came to the forefront of my mind the very moment I heard Dutch van der Linde spinning a yarn at that bar in Crenshaw Hills—stinking of horse and wood-smoke and tobacky, rings glinting on his hand, eyes shining with love of his own voice—and it followed me all the way to the bullet in his head.

Obsession is vanity, boy. And vain men ain’t hard to please.

Out of the frigid night that had fallen over Dead Head Hills, heavy with buffeting wind and foreboding, Arthur’s lantern bobbing in the blizzard was the light-house that saved us that May. We’d been pushing the horses hard for three straight days and nights through a thickening snow, at first to throw off our scent and then because stopping would be suicide.

What on God’s green earth was we doing up there, you may wonder. Well, fleeing God’s green earth.

Our blood was sweeter than we’d realized, you see. We had arrived at Sayoten, Ambarino’s humble cradle of civilization, and decided to test the waters; after over a month of travel, a bit of civilization didn’t seem quite so repulsive. Of course, Dutch had set one toe on the city streets when the Pinkertons began circling. It seemed there wasn’t a place in this free country he could go where the trappings of justice wouldn’t be waiting for him with a cage and a whip.

It was far from the first mistake we’d made that year, though I tended not to call them mistakes—it was just the business we was in. Sometimes a job don’t pan out. Ain’t nobody’s fault, except if it is. This time, we was just unlucky. I was pragmatic about these kinds of things.

That don’t mean I thought these folks was worth the trouble. In fact, this was when I started to have my doubts.

I’d come close to cutting loose a month before, when the Blackwater incident sent Dutch into a panic. As soon as we’d struck the border to the Oklahoma Territory he decided, spur of the moment, on two days of no sleep and a gallon of coffee: Canada. We was going to Canada, British Columbia or some such, an “unspoiled paradise of opportunity.”

That was never going to happen, even a fool could see that. These people had lost everything they had. They’d lost me everything I had. We’d be fresh out of money and living on charity and penny robbery by the time we hit Coll County.

But I wasn’t quite ready to review my prospects just yet, and I’ve often found it easier to put my lips to the ear of a desperate man than a comfortable one.

And so we pushed on north through the West Elizabeth prairie, weaving on and off of the highway and steering clear of civilization proper, never making camp more than two days at a stretch. And as expected, the money dried up within the week. Soon all us that could rob was robbing, even the dead-weight women. It was a risky operation: ten or eleven of us would split into groups and fan out into the vast expanses of farm-land in search of homesteads to shake down or wipe clean under cover of a ruse. Yes—penny robbery. Just enough to buy us the essentials. Then we’d scatter from our groups, meander from a climbing sun to a dying one, and find the caravan several miles ahead of where we left it. Anything to keep the smoke away from the hive. We left quite the trail behind us, one our fretful Arthur Morgan fast became paranoid would catch up to us, slow as we was traveling. But there was God-damned twenty-two of us, wild and starved. We was one missed meal away from holding out our hats by the roadside. Our Indian spent half his time riding out into the rolling steppe and catching up to us by nightfall with a ropy doe slung over his horse’s rump and wild turkeys dangling from the saddle. Until he fried his hand on a hot pan and needed Morgan to be his bow arm. That was a lean week.

Davey Callander passed on the seventh day. Bullet to the gut, a parting gift from Blackwater. We’d thought the poor bastard was going to pull through for a moment—he was chatting, joking, even eating. Drinking like a fish, though that was no surprise. I was driving his wagon for a couple of days; still remember whistling merry duets with him as we trundled through rain and mud. Good whistler, that boy. Then he caught a fever and was dead by morning.

The mood plummeted. Fighting broke out over cigarettes and canned corn. Dutch yelled himself so hoarse he couldn’t speak for two days. Little Jenny took to drink, hard, and all them boys that fluttered in her orbit was quick to fall back. In fact, most of the men began to drift away from the caravan for days and nights at a time; I resumed my habit of bedding down elsewhere, far beyond the outskirts of their camp, under the pretense of keeping watch on the south.

But in my mind I was happy as a sand-boy. This was right where I wanted them: miserable, hateful, frayed. I threw myself harder than ever at Dutch, waxed long about the folly of letting injustice become oppression or something equally trite. I wheedled and I crooned and I debased myself like a dog. The Blackwater money was right there. Leaving it behind for this fairy-tale Promised Land made no damned sense. Dutch was thinking about it—I knew.

Then, at some point while we was still in West Elizabeth, Dutch sent a few of us—myself, Javier Escuella and John Marston—back down to Flat Iron County to retrieve Sean MacGuire and Davey’s brother Mac. No sign of Mac, but we did find our little Irish pup in Ike Skelding’s hands. I tried to convince the boys to write him off. And when that failed, I thought about “accidentally” putting a bullet in him when the shooting started. Didn’t find an opening for that either.

Now, I really couldn’t stand that mouthy cocker spaniel, but this weren’t about that. He was keen, and keen counted for something, even if he was such an awful shot he’d hit the sky if he was aiming at the ground. Give him a couple of years and he could’ve been a good earner.

No, the problem was that the gang threw a whole party to celebrate his safe return. They danced, they caroused, they listened fondly as he unhinged two weeks’ worth of jaw all damned night. He even wrangled a hug out of old Cross-Patch Marston.

The problem was that he was good for morale, and it only took a small victory to make Dutch feel invincible again.

Some of those who is truly obsessed, truly passion crazed, end up losing the line between fantasy and reality. I maintain that Dutch was one such a man—more an idea than a man. Whether or not they believed in him or even liked him particularly, folks was inspired by him to reach out and touch the impossible. He was a messiah, and the world was his stage. And these people of his, these strange ruffians who loved him more than air, Dutch had plucked them off the street and put them in the clouds around his head.

There was nothing I could have said then to make him change his mind. But I was a patient Judas; always had been. So, my mood as foul and fickle as the wind, I followed him and his flock like a homeless mutt up into Ambarino.

That was where we lost Jenny. We’d stopped for a piss break on a mountain road. She was blind drunk.

“Where you off to, sweetheart?” I asked, half laughing as I reached out for her arm.

Prickly thing swerved to avoid me—swerved straight off the side of the mountain, took a fifty-foot tumble, and split her head open like a melon on the rocks. The rapids at the bottom of the gorge stole her body away before we could conceive of how to get it back; only thing left behind was a little glob of brain against a halo of blood. When we fashioned her a grave the next day, we didn’t even have to dig a hole.

Didn’t seem entirely my fault—and yes, you maniac, of course I tried to catch her—but the way this damned gang acted, you’d have thought I pushed her off myself. Old Hosea had Dutch locked in furtive conversations about me. The women screamed at me; the greaser punched me. Morgan was starting to wonder if he should dispense with me. I could see it in his eyes, all flint and steel. He was a nosy bastard at the best of times, but now he wouldn’t let me out of his sight. Out here, it wouldn’t take much to kill a man: it’d be as easy as pushing him off a mountain.

I stopped sleeping.

In late April, the cold snap set in hard and fast. We was deep in the Grizzlies East, nestled in valleys and pines, when a tide of snow descended upon us and forced us onto the exposed all-weather road. For hours every morning and night there was a brisk snowfall; the rambling mountain roads that saw no sunlight became slippery with ice, and those in the sun was more mud than dirt. We was stuck on the highway with our heads on a swivel. Dutch sent out scouts in all directions to check the roads for Pinks and the towns for talk. But all we found on the highway was harried travelers and surly locals, and all the towns assumed we was prospectors heading west to try our luck in the Spine like so many others.

The old guard took to mingling again: fraternizing with the powerful, preaching to the destitute. We replenished our numbers with two new stragglers. My life was flashing before my eyes, visions of dying deprived in the damned snow surrounded by delusions and sheep that multiplied even as they starved.

By the time we’d reached Sayoten it was the start of a very cold May, and Dutch was the king of the world. Rode right into the city with Hosea and Arthur at his shoulders. He might as well have spread his arms and declared, “I am Dutch van der Linde, have you folks heard of me yet?”

The Pinkertons had. And they were already there.

“Did you get a good look at it, son?” Dutch lifted his lantern higher, straining to see the Morrigan’s rump past the snowflakes whisked into a flurry around us.

“Sure . . .” Arthur’s voice was barely a whisper. “It’ll do us . . . somewhere for the horses . . . old . . .”

“Louder, Arthur, I can’t hear you!”

“It’ll do us!”

Dutch shoved the reins at me, set down the lantern and made to stand. As I struggled to unclench my frozen fingers he leaned over the side of the bed-wagon and whistled sharply, reaching out an arm. White as the Count was, Dutch seemed to step out onto thin air and ride ahead on a cloud. I leaned forward in my seat, squinting. The dark riders on their vaporous horses and the sputtery glow of Arthur’s lantern was strange phantoms to my sleepless eyes, dancing between cracks of lightning. If I lost track of them, the gang really would kill me.

“Hey,” came a muffled rasp behind me.

I glanced back. Hosea was awake and dragging himself to his feet, a painstaking effort that had him clutching his chest for breath and my back-rest for balance. His nose and mouth were hidden behind the loose drape of a scarf, his eyes black as pitch in the thin yellow light.

“Micah. Is that”—he paused for a wheeze—“Arthur?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Whad’d he find?”

“Old mining town, abandoned. Seems it’s got the facilities for us.” I hummed to myself, and I drawled, “How lucky we are.”

“Lucky indeed,” said Hosea sourly. “I’m sure we all feel”—wheeze—“very lucky.”

I truly hated Hosea. I hated him more than I hated Arthur Morgan. He did far too much talking, and thinking, and web-spinning—he made an obstacle out of himself at every turn. Just when I’d start making progress with Dutch, Hosea would say something to redirect him. And as much as he played at infallibility, Dutch looked to Hosea as the pulse of his little “family.” When the wife complained, Dutch ruminated, he demurred, he temporized. Sheer miracle I’d gotten the ferry job through to him, but if there was one thing I knew I could count on, it was that the boss did not let opportunities slip through his fingers. Even Hosea’s nay-saying was no cure for a man of action.

The old boy was a nuisance, generally, but up here in these God-forsaken mountains, he was my unwitting ally. I was staking my bets on him. See, he was very unwell. More unwell than I’d ever seen him. He rested with his head tipped back and his mouth hanging open. His breath came short and grated, as if forced through too small a hole, and his coughing fits was beginning to sound desperate. With each passing day, with increasing urgency, Hosea wanted to turn us around—and if anyone was going to make that happen, it was him.

Looking at him then, watching him sit back down laboriously and curl up in unfurled sugans, I thought he may well die trying.

It was at least an hour before we arrived at Arthur’s town. Sure wasn’t much to look at: ramshackle buildings up to their knees in snow, with gap-toothed roofs and shattered windows, floors littered with thin ice and refuse. But Arthur was right—it’d do us. I’d certainly survived worse.

We knew that parking the wagons meant we wasn’t moving again until the thaw, so Dutch had all the men who could still stand mount up and do a proper inspection. Arthur scribbled out a rough map of what he’d seen as he rode through and sent the eight of us off in pairs. There was around three dozen houses, most of them reduced to splinters; a saloon with no roof; the remains of an assay office, a general store and a “Spider Gorge Mining Company” building; a small post-office near a stable; and the snowed-in shell of a stone chapel. Bill and I took the south end of the town, where the post-office and stables stood.

I hated Bill, too. “Not sure about this one” was his announcement every time we stepped through a door. Broken windows and icy floors was enough to deter him. Where did they find this princess? I had him check which rooms had the fewest gaps and drafts while I stuck my arm up chimney flues. Most of them was slippery with ice, and the tops of the stacks was clogged with snow. There would be no warm hearths until they was cleared—especially since there wasn’t a dry branch as far as the eye could see.

When we returned to the caravan, the rest of the scouts was already back.

“North side’s a bust,” said Lenny.

“Except there’s a cabinet of white mule in this funny old shack.” Lamb tapped a square on Arthur’s map and smiled. “It’s still good. Smells like floor polish.”

Lamb was our latest recruit, a scrawny full-blooded Indian—Arapaho, I think, or maybe Cheyenne—with broad shoulders and a stumpy neck. He closed his eyes and scrunched his nose like a child when he smiled. As the story went, he murdered all seven members of his family, ripped out their intestines to make nooses and hung their corpses from the pines like Christmas baubles. Dutch’s talk of the virgin plains of Canada lit stars in his dark eyes. He was with us for the kingdom, not the king. I knew a sycophant when I saw one, and he knew I knew.

“We didn’t find nottin,” said Sean. He’d been stamping his feet since he got out of the wagon. “Match-sticks, all it.”

Arthur thwacked him on the back of the head, nearly knocked his hat off. “Two or three are salvageable. Some small gaps, but we can do something about that.”

“We can’t stay in doze, we’ll bloody freeze to det!” snapped Sean.

“Sean won’t survive, but we can chop him into bits and patch the holes with him.”

“You’re a real piece o’work, Morgan.”

“I think you’ll find you’re the piece o’work. Several pieces, actually. I’m sure some of us will miss you. What else?”

John took Arthur’s pencil and crossed out half the map. “Central’s a wreck. Roofs are done in.”

“Saw a couple round here”—Charles swept a finger along the outskirts—“that was mostly intact, but they’re pretty far from things.”

“Hm, don’t like that, need the horses closer. Bill?”

“Post-office is good,” said Bill, glancing at me, “stables is good, and these, these four houses is good.”

Arthur rubbed his forehead. “Why don’tchu define ‘good’ for me, Bill?”

“Well—Well—”

I took over before Bill tried to think too hard and sprained something.

We quickly decided to move the gang to the south side where there was the least damage and the closest escape route. The women, the ill and the old was to share a shotgun-house; another next door was for storage and chuck; the seven working men would get the cramped little post-office; and Dutch would get his palace, a big, sturdy log cabin, to do with as he wished.

Naturally, Morgan would be staying with him. He wasn’t even apologetic about it. The privilege of the first-born. I was starting to really seethe, but I held my tongue.

As soon as the domestics disembarked from the wagons and entered our new camp, the work began. Susan Grimshaw pounced upon her brood, flapping and squawking: we needed beds and blankets laid out, we needed drink and air-tights brought in, we needed fire, we needed to board up these windows, we needed to pull ourselves up by our God-damned bootstraps. The men began unloading the wagons. The women carried supplies into their shotgun-house, and Charles and Arthur lugged Javier in after them like a limp corpse. He’d had the grippe something awful for three or four days now, delirious and trembling, whimpering and whining. If he didn’t gracefully pass away soon, I was happy to help speed things along.

“Hey, hey.” Out by the bed-wagon, Dutch raised his lantern to illuminate Hosea’s face where his scarf had fallen askew. “Your lips are lookin a little blue.”

Hosea waved him off stubbornly. “I’ll be fine.”

Ignoring him, Dutch forced Hosea’s arm over his shoulders and shuffled him forward. “Gonna get you inside, warm you up.”

“I’ll be fine, for God’s sake.”

“Of course you will. We didn’t come all this way for you to keel over in Ambarino, damn you.” Dutch pointed at Pearson, who had a cauldron in his arms. “Mr. Pearson, we need some coffee immediately! Meantime”—he rummaged frantically in the pockets of his coat until he found a small silver flask, which he shoved into Hosea’s heaving chest—“I-I got summa this stuff, you can have that. Where is Toy Ann? Somebody get me Toy Ann!”

Victoria Ann Baker was a creature of mischief to rival the Devil: there when you least wanted to see her, disappeared the moment you called her name. At least a hundred years old, by the look of her. We’d picked her up purely by happenstance after Morgan and Javier found her cottage in the secluded valleys of Deerwood County and robbed her blind.

That was the plan, anyway. She ambushed them from behind a door brandishing a meat cleaver and a bottle of something that made them vomit when she cracked it over their heads, and like the soft touch they was, the boys couldn’t bring themselves to shoot her.

Apparently the addled crone fancied herself some sort of herb-wife—I still don’t know what the Hell that is, but Morgan took a liking to her eccentricity, as was his habit. He bought from her some suspicious black liquid for Hosea, a tincture she called “Toy Ann’s Crackerjack Cure-All,” and to our astonishment, it didn’t kill the old man outright. In fact, Dutch was convinced it was working. He would not rest until he added the little miracle worker to his collection. I never learned how exactly he encouraged her to leave that cottage in the woods for the company of hopeless crooks—maybe he sold her on the Canadian dream, or the promise of a fairer society, or any number of his delusions of grandeur—but next thing I knew, she had stolen one of Pearson’s cauldrons to brew unknowable horrors in the middle of our camp.

And of course, because Dutch wanted her now, she was not there. Lenny took off into the snow, hollering her name.

“You gonna do any work, or you just gonna stand there?”

That was Arthur coming up behind me. I jumped out of my skin.

“I’m smoking,” I said testily. Then, remembering I didn’t like the idea of being pushed off a mountain, I tapped out another cigarette and offered it to him. “Want one?”

He wrinkled his nose. “From you?”

I blinked innocently. “From a man who happens to be offering, sure.” I chuckled, turning snide. “Are you that prideful? You’d rather sulk than take a smoke that don’t cost you nothin? Nothin but your pride, I suppose.”

Unmoved, Arthur folded his arms, his face a mask of stone. “You’re slime, you know that? Yer like the scum that grows on rocks in the water.”

“And you’re like a little star”—I swept my cigarette across the sky—“breakin through the clouds of a midnight storm.”

“Don’t talk like that, it makes me nauseous. But that—Stop it.” He batted at the hand that was still holding out the pack. “I’m not takin yer damn smoke.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, and stuffed it into my coat.

Despite his rejection, Arthur was hesitant to leave me in peace. He loomed over me, tall and dark as a ponderosa pine, staring me down as though waiting for me to do something. There was a hard glint of suspicion in his eyes; my antics seemed to have drawn out the busybody in him that needed to know exactly what my business was.

And it seemed he was going to get there obliquely.

“There’s a”—he raised his arm to the south—“a crick runs down thataway, ‘Spider Gorge,’ I guess, from that sign on the company building—”

“Not on your county map?” I asked.

“None of this immaculate wonderland is on my county map.” He leveled me a meaningful look. “And let’s keep it that way.”

So that was his angle. “Don’t gotta tell me twice.”

“Think I gotta tell you in particular at least four times, to be safe.”

“Now, now, let’s not squabble,” I said, raising my hands. “It ain’t the time. There’s work to be done.”

“Well you’re damn right about that, and yet here you are, smoking.”

That about did it.

“And here you are,” I sneered, “loitering beside me with both hands unoccupied. So why don’t you worry about your own damn self?”

His jaw hardened. Our talk collapsed into a tense silence, broken only by the bustle of men crunching through snow and yelling over the wind. I watched him carefully, and he watched me back. Snowflakes drifted under the eaves and gathered in his beard. He didn’t look like he was planning my untimely demise; he looked irritated, mildly. I may as well have accused him of failing to darn my socks. My anger flared from a smolder to a roar. Imagine that: Dutch’s pet scum trying to rile Arthur Morgan. The creature women screamed at and darkies punched.

So I just chuckled as if I’d won—a black sound that bubbled like tar in my throat—and tried another tack.

“How’s old Hosea, then?” I asked. “And the Mex?”

“Freezin to death,” said Arthur, impassive.

I nodded sagely. “Sure. But we’ve had plenny a snowy days lately. They’ll be fine.”

“Nothin like this. We shouldn’t be up here in these mountains. We—”

He clammed up suddenly, his mouth clicking shut. I smiled at him with all my teeth, and he turned away to glare at the ground. How embarrassing for him—admitting those dirty doubtful thoughts in front of me.

“Keep the faith, brother.” I spread my arms, gesturing to the black blizzard rolling around us. “Canada, a land of untamed prosperity.”

“It won’t be like this,” he said firmly.

“Of course not,” I soothed. “Forests and meadows. Crystalline lakes. And no Pinkertons. All that country, ripe—for—the—taking.”

“You may fool Dutch with that talk, but you don’t fool me.”

“Always the cynic, ain’tchu.” Flicking away the butt of my cigarette, I said off-handedly, “Gotta clear those chimneys, Morgan.”

“Sure,” he said. But his brow furrowed the way it did when he was swirling too many thoughts around in that worrisome brain of his.

“Salt and hot water,” I offered.

He lifted his head then and looked at me directly. A new glint came into his eyes, like a fat doe had crossed his path, or a strange bird had landed on his hat.

Like I had pleasantly surprised him.

He nodded. “Get Pearson on it. You take Lamb up the roofs with a shovel and some axes.”

If I was the type to cry, I would have cried. Fool me for thinking I could rest—I’d been standing still for so long the exhaustion was finally settling into my cold-brittled bones. I had the wild thought of flopping over and playing possum.

Instead I said, with some indignation, “Lamb?”

“He won’t fall off.”

Unfortunately, that was true. The redskin was light on his feet, his body sculpted for the crude efficiency of a mountain goat.

“Axes won’t cut it,” I said.

“Just the shovel, then. I don’t know, you’re the expert, take whatever you think will work.”

“Well who’s got the damn shovel?”

“That’s for you to find out.”

“What was you gonna tell me about that crick down south?”

“Not important. You ain’t weaseling outta this.”

The glint was gone; the enforcer was back.

“I ain’t weaseling outta anything, boss,” I growled. I sucked in a long, sharp breath. “I’ll get it done.”

“Do the shack first, we need to get Jack and Hosea warmed up fast.”

I dipped into a mocking bow. “As you wish, my liege.”

While Morgan trudged off to sip cocktails with Dutch on the log cabin porch or whatever other “work” he planned on doing, I found myself stuck helping Pearson light a fire for the next hour. By the time he’d put water on the boil, Lamb had been sent back to that shed full of moonshine, so I was saddled with Lenny. Boy took another half-hour just to find me a damned shovel and some bags of salt. I threatened him with a bullet for every headache he’d cause me, but he still gave me lip the whole time and slipped off the roof twice. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Abigail kept sticking her head in the flue to remind us that her damned brat was cold, until some one at last had the bright idea to move the deadwood into the post-office where there was an old potbelly stove. Presumably to burn them in.

Melting and salting both chimneys was such an operation that we finished just as the last whispers of snow was drifting down and the sun was cresting Dead Head Crown. I was dog tired, bone tired. I felt twice my age. I forgot I hadn’t eaten in two days and went straight to the post-office and fell asleep to the sound of Tilly Jackson singing the child a lullaby.

Six hours later, the pale midday sun met my eyes through the cracks in the boards. I woke with a start.

“Wouldja look at that,” said Uncle from his seat by the stove, saluting me with a bottle of whisky. “Thought you’d gone an died, boy. Don’tchu know there’s work needs doin?”

| Next |

[anonymousao3writer]

The Angel That Is Icarus — Foreword

Chapter Summary:

The apple never falls far from the tree, and Micah Bell III is proof of that.

Rating: Mature Characters: The Bell family Warnings: Mention of rape and murder Wordcount: 564

| AO3 Link | Masterlist |

They called us the Rattlesnake Twins on account of my brother’s nervous tic.

He was an antsy thing back then, with darting eyes so electric blue they nearly glowed, and a stutter that meant I did all the talking. Stress would make him itchy. Whenever we was robbing, looting, sticking up or shooting off, he’d get that itch in him, that jolt of nerves, and he’d start shaking like a dog. Arms out by his sides, legs hopping on hot coals, head until his hat was askew, body lit up with forked lightning. Problem was that old revolver of his—Daddy’s meekest Buck, one he stole off the corpse of a baker too meek for the back-water he came from—it had such a sloppy cylinder it’d turn any dead silence to sand. Like shaking up a damned maraca.

Imagine awakening at midnight not to the croak of a floor-board but to an ungodly rattle from the dark—ch-ch-ch-ch—and four blue eyes flashing cold and predatory in the corner of the bedroom.

I could’ve killed that boy for the headache his habits caused me. And I admit, though a futile complaint for the third of his name, it always did irk me to be named for acts which I did not commit. From the tender age of seventeen I was wanted dead or alive in three counties for the nomadic depravity of my family. You might think I’d begrudge them the Hell they made my life and the Devil they made me, but meaning’s a funny thing. This was my trade, my legacy. It soured my pride when it was their depravity in the papers and not mine. Though I suppose that is man’s ultimate progenitive drive—to make more of himself, to live on in their deeds, to become immortal in the blood-lines of the earth.

Well, we had a lot of stories, the three of us: me, that brother of mine and our no-good daddy. Our daddy’s daddy, too—already three years hung by the time I arrived. But out of respect for my brother, I won’t be sharing family stories this time. Nor will I spell out the name I knew him by. For though we Rattlesnakes fought long and hard, we too fell in with the flock. Dug our blood-line some fresh trenches, made new names for ourselves (fuck you, Daddy, ha ha ha). Civilized living, if not well mannered. It is not my business to take that from him, as I hope he would not take it from me.

I ain’t a good man; I’ll never be one, and that’s a fact, because I just can’t bring myself to care about such things as taxes and peace-keeping and jay-walking. Life ain’t trifles, it ain’t some divine wig’s decree of rights and wrongs. Nevertheless, reader, consider yourself duly warned that I am by societal reckoning a much better man than the one I will be writing about. I did steal, I did rape, I did kill, and I did not feel remorse, and I did not show mercy, and I did not love. It took many wounds to seed those knotted scars in me. This story is about those wounds—every bloody, sordid inch of them.

Come sit by the fire and play us a song as I return to the head of a long-dead man named Micah Bell.

| Next |

[anonymousao3writer]

The Angel That Is Icarus (Masterlist)

Summary:

When Dutch van der Linde resumes his habit of picking up waifs, Micah realizes he’s become entangled in a violent tragicomedy with no end nor reward, and he begins to doubt he can stick it out for the long con. In other words, a loose-ish retelling of the game’s events if a fresh batch of kids and the wonderful Tilly Jackson put Micah on a redemption arc of his own. Set over a longer time span in a bigger country. Really not a fix-it, in some ways a make-it-worse.

Rating: Mature

Featuring:

Micah & "Where's my coffee, boy!"

Hosea & the light of his life

Dutch & the Dutch defense

Micah / Tilly

Arthur & trying his best but not succeeding

Hosea & Dutch (it surely ain't straight but they can have their privacy)

Warnings: Micah POV; graphic violence; death and abuse of children, animals, major characters; rape (not described); Micah being a dickhead; the gang being dickheads; Dutch being Dutch; period-typical attitudes; slurs

CHAPTERS

| Foreword. | Tumblr | AO3 | | Chapter I. Obsession I. | Tumblr | AO3 | | Chapter II. Obsession II. | Tumblr | AO3 | | Chapter III. Obsession III. | Tumblr | AO3 |

Chapter III Preview:

“Oh Colom, dear, an did yeh hear “The news dat’s goin round? “The shamrock is by law forbid “To grow on Dead Head ground! “Saint Patrick’s Day no more we’ll keep, “His colors can’t be seen; “For dey’re hangin men an women fer “The wearin of the green!”