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thatjustmakesyouabetacuck · 3 years

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The Journey (c. 1862)

“You know what I’m gonna do, when all this is over?”

Ben took a second to register the question. His unit had been posted to help guard the Antietam Creek. They’d just arrived in town not two days prior, and McLellan had put them to work almost immediately. There’d hardly been the time to catch a good night’s sleep, and he’d spent a not-insignificant portion of that spare time trying to put together a letter for Gemma.

It was hard to figure out what to say, though. He could hardly remember what his last one had said. And it was hard for her to reach him back, by the very nature of his travels, so it wasn’t as though he knew much of what she was up to either to ask after. He kept the letters he did get from her, but they were well out of date by the time he got them.

All he’d managed to come up with was, he was alive, and the Union seemed to be winning the war. So maybe he’d be able to come home soon. And maybe she’d be married to someone else by then. It had been a year already, and who knew how many more it might be before he was home?

And it wasn’t as though she’d said she’d wait for him. She hadn’t said she would, and he hadn’t asked her to. It wouldn’t have been fair to ask. They’d never really spoken about the future, theirs’ or just in general - They’d only just begun to spend time together when the war broke out.

Ben had only asked if he could write to her.

There wasn’t much joy to be had, nowadays. He wanted to preserve just a little of it for himself, even if it was just catching the hint of her smell on the paper for a few seconds when he opened them up. Even just keeping her voice alive in his head, reading her words.

Even if they never got the chance to find out what might have been, he wanted to survive, if only to get home and tell her that those letters had preserved his sanity, and likely saved his life a dark day or two.

“I say, you know what I’m gonna do when-”

Ben shifted around. “What are you gonna do, private?”

“I’m going to have a cannoli.” Private Bradshaw sighed, dreamily.

“A cannoli?”

“My mother makes a great cannoli. I miss ‘em.” Bradshaw glanced out over the creek. “I miss her.”

Ben had nearly forgotten that Silas Bradshaw was only a couple months past his sixteenth birthday. He’d claimed twenty years, the day they’d met, but Ben had cottoned on quickly. The boy was barely shaving.

Him and Chamberlain, before the latter had been killed in Maryland. They’d lied about their ages to enlist, and part of him had known even then that he should have sent them home. Neither boy had even seen their twentieth year yet, and Ben felt responsible to make sure that Bradshaw at least got to go on and lead a full life, once they all got out of this thing.

“I miss my wife’s church dress,” Corporal Sinkler added on. “It’s green. Nice lace collar. She saw it in a store window in town, and she never said to me she wanted it, but I could tell ‘cause she always stopped to look at it when we were doing our shopping and I couldn’t afford to buy it for her - the factory barely paid me enough that we could live off it. So she spent months, three, four months, sewing up torn clothing and teaching piano to raise the money ‘til she could buy it for herself.” He rested his head back against the fence post, and smiled fondly. “My Mary-Ann, she was always clever with money. And the first time I saw her in it…”

He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “Ah, call me a bad catholic, but I couldn’t tell you what an angel’s meant to look like. But my Mary-Ann, in that green dress, and her hair loose in the breeze and that pretty little gap in her teeth - I think they’re like that. They must be.”

Ben smiled and nodded along. “That’d be nice.”

Creswell lamented, “I miss my little boy. My Zeke.”

And so they went, around the circle. Listing off things about back home that they missed. The things they wanted to come back home to one day.

“If they’re still there, anyhow,” Sergeant Carter muttered.

Ben elbowed him in the ribs.

Creswell demanded, “And what’s that mean?”

Carter looked back at Ben questioningly, and Ben shook his head. Carter’s brow furrowed, Ben shook his head. Carter turned back to Creswell. “It means, we’ve been gone two years. Two hard, lean years. You think Zeke’s still gonna be the same little boy when you get back?” He turned to Sinkler. “You’re from Philadelphia, aren’t you? You got anything but old letters to say your wife’s still as safe and alive as you left- ?”

Ben rubbed at his temple. “Sergeant.”

“Hell, for all Sinkler knows-”

“Sergeant,” Ben put a hand on Carter’s arm. “Jordan. With all due respect, shut the fuck up.”

“I’m just saying, Sarge.”

“I know what you’re just saying.”

“Me,” Carter said. “I’m not that fussed about getting home. I’ve got nothing keeping me there. My folks went back to Toronto when the war started up. I’ve never been able to find any long-term work anyway, outside of that ranch. And I’m not one for animals. Least this war’s meant steady pay.”

The other soldiers fell silent. It was as though the air had been let out of the conversation. Ben turned his attention back to the creek. There were supposed to be Confederate soldiers camped out a ways over the bridge, but they’d been ordered not to engage.

A year back, Ben might’ve fought the order. He’d have found it passive, and cowardly. Now, he got it. He’d been in command of the unit all of three months, by way of a death and a couple field promotions, and he’d already figured out about himself that when he was the guy calling the shots, he was in no hurry to run his men into unnecessary danger.

“I miss her laugh,” Ben said finally, out loud.

“Who?”

“This girl back home.” Ben kept his eyes locked out on the creek, his shoulder resting agains the fence. “A friend of mine. She’s got this laugh I always liked, when you’d say something strange, or you tell a dirty joke. Always made me want to think up more whenever we were together, just to keep her laughing.” He turned back to Carter, looked right at him. “I think it’s worth trying to keep alive, just to hear it again.” He looked back out at the creek. “And I think looking forward to whatever comes after this war, whatever you go on to do then, that’s worth keeping alive for too. It’s all hope, right?”

Carter thought about that a minute. “Yeah,” He allowed. “It’s all hope.”

There was another long silence, then he turned his attention back to Bradshaw. “Say, Private, you think your ma’d have anything against a black man trying some of that cannoli?”

“No sir,” Bradshaw grinned. “She loves to entertain.”

“Once this war’s done with, I’ll have to make my way down there. See what all the fuss is about.”

And then everybody was talking again, about all the stuff they’d left behind and everything they had to look forward to. With everybody distracted, Ben was left alone with his thoughts again. At least for right then, he thought he preferred it that way.

Gemma, He began dictating his next letter in his head.

Do you remember when that donkey kicked Mel Crankshaw into Callahan’s creek? I’ve oft wondered what he must have been after, sneaking up on that unfortunate ass…

***

The Duel (c. 1866)

“Where’s your gun?”

Josh didn’t respond. He just took his twenty paces, and turned to face his opponent.

Russell Higgins, his name was. Wanted in three counties, for more crimes than you could fit on a poster. Not that Josh cared one way or the other. Barring any danger to him and his, he wasn’t in the business of law enforcement.

“C’mon now,” Higgins complained. “I’m not gonna kill an unarmed kid. I’m an outlaw, not a savage.”

“I’m not unarmed.”

“Where’s your gun?”

“Don’t like ‘em.”

“...You fucking with me?”

“Nope.”

Higgins took off his hat, ran a hand through his thinning hair, and turned to look at the gathered crowd as though to gauge if any of them could believe it either. Then he turned back to Josh, “You fixin’ to die today?”

“No more than you.” Josh kicked at the dirt with the toe of his moccasin. “We doing this or not? ‘Cause I got places to be.”

Higgins glanced back over his shoulder at the crowd. Josh’s gaze was fixed, unmoving, on him and his second. Higgins looked back at him, a long searching look. Josh met his gaze.

He sighed, “Alright.” Then louder, directed at the crowd, “Alright alright alright! Let’s give these fine people what they came here to see! What do you say?”

Josh said nothing.

Higgins took his last three steps back, and took his stance. One foot in front of the other, hand at his hip. Josh stood facing forward, legs shoulder-width apart and hands relaxed at his sides.

Kade, the barman, counted down. “Five, four, three, two…”

He threw a hand up. “One!”

It all happened in the blink of an eye; Kade leapt backwards, tripped over the bottom porch stair, and fell on his ass. Higgins fired off a shot, which whizzed past the exact spot Josh had been standing in a fraction of a second ago. And he had a knife embedded in his right shoulder.

Forty paces away, Josh stood untouched. He’d drawn so quickly, most in the crowd would have sworn they’d never even seen his hand move until the knife left it. The smell of gunpowder lingered in the air, and for the longest of instants, nobody seemed to move a muscle.

Then Higgins dropped his gun, looked blankly down at his chest, and gulped. “Aw fuck...”

He fell to his knees, clutching at his shoulder and screaming bloody murder.

Josh winced away, and crossed his arms over his chest. He’d long since lost count of how many times he’d been through this, but it never got any easier. Usually, he just aimed to shock them, make them drop their gun.

Aside from anything else, every dead body that piled up was more often than not connected to a half-dozen other (very much alive) folk who’d be looking for revenge. And when enough of those came to be, they tended to form posses. Which were much harder to duel than a person at a time.

So, when he could avoid it, he avoided “to the death.” More than not, he just made sure their gun hand wouldn’t be holding much of anything in the near future. Josh’s stomach turned at the thought, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat when he swallowed down.

For a notorious gunfighter, Sheriff Wagner had once observed, you’ve got a pretty weak stomach.

Hard to argue that, Josh thought. There were parts of a good duel that he loved, and that some might even say that he lived for – The nervous anticipation before the draw that crescendoed just as the trigger pulled back. The way his heart always skipped, just for a beat, when the bullet whizzed by. The rush of surviving.

When he let himself get roped in, it was never the aftermath he thought about.

The doctor from up at Kesten Farm elbowed his way through the crowd, and knelt down beside Higgins to try and inspect the wound. Satisfied that his opponent wasn’t going to die, Josh turned and walked away.

He slipped in between a couple onlookers, and disappeared through the crowd. Some lawman or other would be here sooner than later, he told himself.

No sense in sticking around for all that.

***

The Play (c. 1867)

“It makes no sense to do it like that. How are people in the back row supposed to hear?”

“The back row of what?”

From the word ‘go’, Hamlet had been an uphill battle for Khyree. Trying to pass off a closed down general store as a Danish castle was an undertaking in and of itself, but one could cut corners in that regard and still come out alright.

Working within the constraints of that set, however…

“Actors,” Calvin Rolle informed him. “are supposed to project their performances. Play it up for the back row. I read that in a book once.”

“He’s mulling over killing himself. It’s not a bombastic moment.”

“I wasn’t going for bombast, I was going for anguish.”

“And I’m telling you to try for a quieter, more… resigned anguish.”

Calvin looked like he wanted to further argue the point, but a look down at his pocket watch prompted him to decide against it. He ran his hands through his hair, did a lap around the staging area, eyes cast up to the rafters, then stopped, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Right then. Quiet anguish it is. Shall we run it again?”

Khyree sat back down in his director’s chair, and gestured for Calvin to run it again.

Calvin braced himself against a column, arms crossed loosely over his chest as though to brace against cold. “To be, or not to be,” Calvin mused, quietly. “That is the question… “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer,” Here, he shifted his gaze pointedly onto Khyree. “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...”

He stepped up off the column, and shifted his focus off Khyree, off through the store’s front window. “Or to take Arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.” His voice faltered. “To die.” A pause. Khyree leaned in closer. “To sleep...”

A rare grin spread across Khyree’s face, and he nodded. Urging him on. At the front counter, Enzo Castaneda had stopped working on the costume he was in the process of sewing, and turned to watch.

“No more; and by a sleep, to say we end the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation, devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream…”

Calvin started towards Khyree, and Khyree got up out of the chair. Calvin collapsed wearily into it, and sighed heavily. “Aye, there’s the rub.”

Khyree stepped back, fighting the urge to jump for joy. Yes! Yes. This was exactly what he’d been looking for. This was exactly right.

“For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life: For who would bear the whips and scorns of-” Calvin stopped and cleared his throat. His brow furrowed, and he sat up in the chair. “Are you sure about this, mate? I feel as though I’m barely- What if people can’t hear me?”

Khyree turned to Enzo. “Could you hear him okay?”

“Oh yeah.”

Khyree gestured to him, as if to go ‘See?’

“Well, I still reckon, with a full standing room-”

Khyree threw his hands up. “Oh, God save me-”

***

The Game (c. 1867)

“Hit me.”

“You’re at eighteen.”

“I know what I’m about, sheriff.”

It had been two days since Sheriff Vincent Wagner had arrested Logan Griffiths outside the tavern. He’d gotten him on suspicion of horse theft.

Generally speaking, Griffiths wasn’t someone he bothered with much. His territory was out near Dry Banks, and Wagner didn’t have the kind of manpower to bother with the troubles out there much. Plus, he was no friend of the Callahans, and they caught the brunt of Griffiths’ criminality anyhow.

Griffiths was due to face trial at the end of the week, but Wagner didn’t have much faith in him making it there. This was far from Griffiths’ first time in a jail cell, and he’d not made it in front of a judge yet.

That was one of those perils of law enforcement in Vainhollow: If it wasn’t that native gunfighter slipping out over the top bar of the cell when Wagner went outside to take a piss, it was Griffith’s gang tipping over the wagon on the way to the courthouse to bust their leader out.

Even know, Griffiths didn’t seem very concerned about the possibility that he was facing down the hangman’s noose. He was lying on the bed in the cell, arms folded behind his head and his legs crossed. He barely even seemed interested in the game.

Vincent drew a card. He flipped it around, to show Logan the ace. “That’s eleven.”

“It’s one.”

“It’s eleven.”

“It’s one if you got more than ten.”

Wagner sighed. “Well suit yourself, it’s a one. You’re at nineteen.”

Griffiths considered that a moment. “I’ll stand on that.”

“Alright, my turn.”

Vincent drew a three, a four, an ace…

He slapped the table. “This one’s yours’.”

“What d’you owe me now, sheriff? Five bucks?”

Wagner smirked, “I’d go double or nothing.”

“You’re on.”

Wagner took the next two rounds, and now Griffiths owed him twenty bucks. For an outlaw, he found it curious that Griffiths just took what Wagner told him about the cards at face value. He hadn’t cheated, but he could have easily. Griffiths didn’t even check.

It wasn’t like they were ever going to settle the debt, he supposed. And they were both bored anyhow. What fun was there in just jerking the man around the entire time?

“This common practice for you?” Logan asked. “Playing cards with your prisoners?”

“What can I say? Most don’t have the patience for chess.”

“You don’t hate them, then.”

“Who?”

“Your prisoners.”

Wagner stopped to consider that question a moment. “Some more than others.” He reshuffled the deck. “I don’t have much patience for murderers, kiddy fiddlers, or rapists. But most that come through here aren’t bad, in their souls. I don’t believe that. I think a lot of them are good people in a bad situation.”

“So why arrest them?”

“‘Cause bad situation or not, they’re still hurting people.”

“Come on.”

“What?”

“That’s not it.”

“How do you figure?”

“If ‘hurting people’ was all the criteria there was, the Callahans and Crankshaws would’ve faced the firing squad years ago. A poor kid stealing bread, two drunks taking shots at each other on main street - Hell, a bank robber or a town flasher, you’re not arresting them for being bad people. You’re arresting them because they’re the ones you can bully around.”

Vincent started to argue back, but Logan waved a hand. “And by you, of course, I mean the royal you. Pinkertons, sheriffs. Marshals. Law enforcement. I can’t speak for you, specifically. But on the whole? Yeah. They got a feet on the neck of us regular people, and their tongue washing the boots of the people putting money in their pockets.”

“So what’s the alternative? Let nature take its’ course?”

Griffiths shook his head. “Shit if I know. But I know this isn’t working.”

“So where do you fit in?” Wagner propped his feet up on the desk. “You must fit into all this somewhere, right? In your head. You and your friends.”

Griffiths said nothing.

“Let me guess: At least you’re honest about it? Your crimes. At least you own who you are.”

“Something like that.”

“...Well to each their own, I suppose.” He set the deck back down on the table. “You want to go again?”

“Why not?”

Griffiths straightened up, and glanced over his shoulder at the wall behind him. He stared for a second, then eased back down.

“Something the matter?” Wagner asked.

“Nah. Thought I heard a mouse.”

The sheriff swung his legs down off the desk and stood up from his chair. He came closer to the jail cell, and looked down at the floor. There was a hole towards the back of the cell, he noticed, just wide enough that a mouse might squeeze through. But it didn’t look like there was any inside.

“I don’t see one either,” Griffiths offered. “Must’ve imagined it.”

Wagner shrugged, and went back to his desk. As he did, Griffith stood up and braced his hands against the bars. “So, what’d I draw?”

“A seven.”

The shadow a smirk tugged on the corner of Griffiths’ lip. “Must be my lucky day. Hit me.”

Just as Wagner went to draw another card, though, the entire jailhouse rattled. Griffiths braced himself against the bars, but Wagner nearly fell out of his chair. “What the hell was that?!”

Griffiths said nothing.

A loud creak, a pause, and then a heavy slam as the jail shook on its foundations again. The wall at the back of the jail cell had cracked. Wagner stumbled to his feet. “Oh, you gotta be goddamn kidding me…”

This time, Griffiths did smile at him. “I’d suggest you get behind the desk, sheriff. I’d imagine they brought company.”

Wagner drew his gun. Griffiths barely flinched, aside from his hands tightening around the bars of his cell.

“I wouldn’t advise on shooting me, either. They find me dead in here, they’ll probably look unfavorably on that.”

“There’s room enough for all of them in this cell.”

“Specially with that wall taken out, hm? And if they do end up shooting you for shooting me, I wonder, who takes over as sheriff once you’re gone? Surely, if you had any deputies you trusted, you’d have them watching me instead…”

“Shut up.”

The walls shook again, and Wagner braced against his desk.

“D’you even have any deputies?”

One last good shot, and a log came crashing through the wall. Griffiths threw himself back down onto the bed as it slammed into the bars and then swung back out.

“You’ve got be shitting me,” Wagner coughed. “A battering ram?”

Griffiths hopped back up to his feet, and dusted himself off. He reached into his boot, and pulled out a rolled up wad of bills. He pulled out four notes, and dropped them down on the bed. “I believe this is yours’, Sheriff.” He climbed over the wreckage of the back wall, one arm covering his mouth. “And now you can’t go around saying I don’t pay my debts.”

Wagner walked up to the bars. “You know I’m gonna get you right back in here next time we see each other, right?”

Griffiths looked back over his shoulder. “Let’s call the next round double or nothing, yeah?”

One of his boys handed him a stetson, and Griffiths put it on as he climbed out of the jailhouse and back into the sunlight. There was a crowd assembled, but nobody was doing much but gawking. Griffiths threw himself up onto the back of the horse, waved at the sheriff…

And then they were gone.

Wagner stood there for a long moment, staring at the hole in his wall. He couldn’t even think about how much it would cost to repair that damage, right then. He couldn’t even be mad that nobody stepped up to try and… he didn’t know, make a citizen’s arrest or something.

There was a lot about the situation to get angry at, but Sheriff Wagner only had one thing on his mind right then.

“Piece of work,” He muttered to himself. “But I’ll be damned if he doesn’t know how to make an exit.”

At least it’d be a hell of a story to tell over dinner, that night.

#c: ben lavoie #c: josh secord #c: khyree frazier #c: calvin rolle #c: logan griffiths #c: vincent wagner #au: wild west #c: jordan carter

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