Sheriff Bundy’s attention had been divided between Mal and Jinny. Hence he was slow getting off a shot at Mal, so slow that Mal had time to duck out of the way, even as Jamie tumbled to the ground.
Deputy Crump also fell as the rope was cut and went slack in his hands. Suddenly, with nothing to counterbalance him, his strenuous pulling was converted into strenuous falling backwards. He sprawled in the dust. Mal pounced, planting a knee on Crump’s chest to pin him down, then slid the deputy’s gun out of its holster. He drew a bead on Bundy, cocking the hammer.
Standoff.
Jinny ran to Jamie’s side and released the noose. Jamie rolled over, retching and wheezing.
Bundy eyed Mal beadily. “You won’t, boy. You don’t have the stones. You ain’t never shot no one in your life, and the last person you’re going to start with is a lawman.”
“Or maybe,” said Mal, “the first.”
And he fired.
Neither Jinny nor Jamie could believe it. Same went for Crump, who stared up at Mal aghast.
Even Mal himself was a little surprised. It was as though some part of him had known he had no choice, while another part reeled in astonishment.
Bundy went down like a sack of coal. For several long moments Mal was convinced the sheriff was dead. He hadn’t known he had it in him to kill someone. Now he understood what it took: the right motivation, the right mix of necessity and desire. This was it. He had crossed a bridge he could not cross back. His life from now on would never be the same.
Then Bundy hauled himself up into a sitting position. “Gorramn owwww!” he cried, clutching his shoulder. “That hurts like a tā mā de hún dàn!”
Not dead. Just wounded.
Mal didn’t know how he felt about that. Relieved, yes, but not entirely.
“You moron, Reynolds!” Crump exclaimed, still pinned under Mal’s knee. “We weren’t really going to hang him!”
“Huh? You expect me to believe you?”
“Believe what you want. It’s true.”
“Sure is,” said Bundy. “You think we’d be able to get away with something like that? ’Specially not with that fancy-talking lawyer-bitch Finn woman around. Nope, all’s we were doing was giving Adare a scare. I’ve heard tell it can take a man up to six minutes to pass out during a short drop hanging, twenty minutes till he’s actually dead. We weren’t going to let him dangle more than a minute or so.”
“Making a point,” said Crump. “Teaching him a lesson. Teaching all of you lot.”
“Some gorramn lesson,” Jamie croaked.
“Sure looked to me like you were going to go through with it,” Mal said.
“And to me,” said Jinny.
“Wouldn’t have been effective if it hadn’t been convincing,” said Bundy.
“And that stuff about hanging me as well?” said Mal. “That just big talk too?”
“Damn straight,” said Bundy.
Mal rose to his feet. “Okay,” he said. “Fact remains, you crossed a line, both of you.”
“As did you, Reynolds,” said Crump. “Shooting an officer of the law.”
Mal turned the gun on him. “I can always make it two officers of the law. Want that?”
Crump gulped and shook his head.
“Then shut up and listen. I reckon we all need to come to some sort of accommodation here. This is my proposal. Events went as follows. You, Sheriff Bundy, and you, Deputy Crump, came out into the wilds in order to carry out some target practice. There was an accident. Crump discharged his gun—this very one in my hand— and wounded his superior officer. That’s it. No attempted hanging, bogus hanging, whatever it was. Jamie, Jinny and I weren’t even here. What do you say? Sound reasonable?”
Bundy’s expression was steely. Blood oozed out over the fingers of the hand he was pressing against the bullet hole. Finally he said, “Seems as though I don’t have a choice.”
“You do. You can choose not to go along with what I’m suggestin’, and both you and your buddy Orville will find yourselves in shallow graves in the shade of this very tree. You think I’m not serious? I wasn’t aiming to wound you just now, Bundy, I was aiming to kill. And now that I’ve started down that road, don’t see as how I’m liable to stop. There won’t be any witnesses to your deaths, at least none that’ll testify against me. Ain’t that right, Jinny? Jamie?”
Sister and brother both nodded resolutely.
“There we go,” said Mal. “But just to make sure the three of us walk away unharmed and you don’t get it into your heads to shoot us in the back, we’re going to empty your gun of its shells, Sheriff, and this one as well, and take your ammo belts.”
When that was done, and Mal had unlocked the handcuffs on Jamie using the key from Crump’s belt, he and the Adare siblings took their leave of the lawmen, heading back to the road. While Jinny got back on her horse, Mal hotwired the police cruiser and drove it off with Jamie in the passenger seat. There seemed nothing to be gained by making it easy for Bundy and Crump to get back to town.
“Mal,” Jamie said, “how can I ever thank you?”
“You don’t need to. You’d have done the same for me.”
“I would’ve at that.” He fingered the line of rope burn on his neck. “I knew Bundy’d been getting more and more out of control lately. Just never realized he might take it as far as he did. Think he’s gone a little crazy.”
“Think the whole ’verse is going a little crazy. Bundy’s craziness just a by-product of that.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have put it past him to kill me, though. Wasn’t any doubt in my mind but that I was a goner. And now you’ve interfered, he’s only going to hate us all the more. That was some fancy knife-throwing, by the way.”
“I was aiming for Crump,” Mal said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, and I’d’ve got him too, if that damn rope hadn’t gotten in the way.”
They both laughed.
“Listen, were you being serious back there?” Jamie said. “About signing up with the Independents?”
“I’m giving it some proper thought. Crump wasn’t wrong about how the Alliance is behaving on the Red Sun worlds, and elsewhere. As you can see from what I did to him, I would seem to have a problem with authority riding roughshod over people. Guess that sentiment extends way beyond Seven Pines Pass, Shadow, the Georgia system, all the way out into the wider ’verse. Besides, ain’t as if there’s much going on for me here. Just farm work, ranching, the day-to-day grind…”
“The call of adventure, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Got me a feeling that I’m hearing it too,” Jamie said. “Maybe it takes a brush with death to put things into perspective. If you threw in with the Independents, I might just too. There’s a recruiting office opened up in Da Cheng Shi, I heard.”
“I heard that too.”
“Not sure how I’d break it to my parents.”
“Same with me and my mother. Might be best if we just didn’t, simply hopped the train to Da Cheng Shi without telling ’em. You think Jinny would join us?”
“Not sure how she feels about the whole situation. She doesn’t much like the Alliance, that’s for sure, but I reckon it’d be better if she stays at home anyway, for our parents’ sake. One child running off, like as to get himself killed, is bad enough—but both of them?”
“Yeah, I see your point.” But Mal might quite have liked it, were Jinny to have come along with them to Da Cheng Shi. Might have quite liked to spend some time in close proximity to her, without Toby around. See what developed.
“You don’t think we’d be running away, do you?” Jamie said.
“What do you mean?”
“From Bundy. Because if I know that man, he’s going to be sticking to our agreement for a while, but when his shoulder’s better, when he’s back on his feet, he’ll be fuming. He won’t let it rest. He’ll come after us again.”
“You think? I think he’s licked and he knows it.”
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“Maybe you’re right. You’ve always been the confident one, Mal.”
Or, Mal thought, the one who doesn’t think things through or care about the repercussions.
They abandoned the police cruiser on the outskirts of Seven Pines Pass and walked the rest of the way in. Jamie announced that the drinks were on him, and they headed straight for the Silver Stirrup, where Jinny caught up with them later. It turned into one of the epic drinking sessions of Mal’s life, five straight hours of necking beers and whisky chasers and laughing uproariously with the Adare siblings. And when it was over, Jamie staggered homeward in the dark while Jinny accompanied Mal to the Reynolds ranch, leading her horse because she was far too inebriated to ride.
What happened next was as inevitable as it was, in hindsight, regrettable. They got as far as the bluff overlooking town. Next thing they knew, they were kissing. Next thing they knew after that, Jinny had laid out her horse’s saddle blanket on the ground. Beneath the stars, on a hot night, with all three of Shadow’s moons on the rise and a slight cooling breeze, they made love. It was sweet and fierce, tender and spectacular. Unforgettable.
Afterwards, as they lay together with Jinny’s head cradled in Mal’s arm, she said, “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“What, taken the Lord’s name in vain as much as we just did?”
“No, I mean it.” Her face was serious. “Toby and I… We’re still together. As far as he’s concerned, we’re a couple. I think he’s going to ask me to marry him. He keeps mentioning engagement rings and stuff, and looking at houses for sale.”
“That does surely seem like the talk of someone with marriage on their mind. What do you think about it?”
“I think I love Toby but I don’t love love him, if you see the difference.”
“The difference being two loves instead of one.”
“Can you ever not be facetious?”
“If I knew the meaning of the word, I’d know what I wasn’t supposed to be. So if Toby proposes…”
“I’ll say no.”
“And crush him forever.”
“Don’t say that!” Jinny snapped. “Please, don’t.”
“You know it’s true. Guy like Toby, when he gets wrapped up in a girl, there ain’t nothing going to untangle him easily, not without it hurtin’ him plenty. ’Specially a girl like you.”
“But I can’t say yes if he isn’t the man I want to be with for the rest of my life.”
Mal wondered if he might be the man Jinny would want to be with for the rest of her life. He didn’t dare voice the thought, for fear that he would be as crushed as Toby was going to be when Jinny rejected his proposal.
“Whatever happens,” Jinny said firmly, “this thing tonight, you and me, it was a one-off. You hear me, Mal? It was terrific, it was lovely, but it’s not going to be repeated.”
“So, what, this was just my reward for saving your brother?”
“No. No! I need to figure out where I stand with Toby, apart from anything else.”
Mal was crestfallen. He was also quite sure, within himself, that despite what she said, it was not going to be a one-off.
And he was right. He and Jinny kept contriving to be in the same place at the same time, their paths crossing seemingly by accident but not really. These random encounters all had the same outcome. And there would be guilt afterwards, and a vow not to see each other again, invariably broken.
Naturally Toby was appalled when he learned about what Bundy had done, or tried to do, and said he would inform his mother. She would have Bundy out of a job within a week, and sue him for damages, too. Mal and Jamie, however, persuaded him not to tell her. They reckoned Bundy was neutralized, Crump as well. Both lawmen were so far sticking to the story Mal had concocted about a firearms accident. Both were getting ribbed for it by the locals and were taking the mockery stoically. Their feigned chagrin suggested to Mal that they wanted to put the truth of the incident behind them, and involving Marla Finn might just stir up something that appeared settled. If Bundy were plotting any kind of revenge, he was hiding it well. Maybe, for all his pigheadedness, even he realized he had overstepped the mark and needed to pull back.
Then war broke out on Shadow. The Alliance had been pushing its influence further and further out from the Core, sweeping up more and more planets in its barbed-wire embrace. All across the ’verse there had been skirmishes between Alliance troops and opposition forces, ragtag militias that were poorly armed but made up for it with guts and determination. It was war in all but name, until finally the Alliance declared that a state of hostility existed between it and all worlds that resisted its influence. This was simply formalizing what had hitherto been implicit.
By then, Jinny had broken it off with Toby. She had also broken it off with Mal. Toby did not know that they had been seeing each other behind his back, but Jinny felt she could not simply take up with Mal, not so soon after ending things with Toby. She said she needed time out to think about their relationship and figure out what she herself wanted, promising it was just temporary. She was still bruised and fragile from having to jilt Toby. It had not been an easy decision.
Toby came to Mal for consolation, and one of the hardest feats Mal had ever pulled off was offering the kid a shoulder to cry on. He ached to tell Toby about himself and Jinny but knew he never could. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that he had lost her. Instead, he comforted Toby, got him drunk, was every inch the good friend.
Next day, he found himself on that train to Da Cheng Shi. Jamie was with him. So was Toby.
Once again, as before during the heyday of the Four Amigos, Toby was tagging along. His motives were straightforward. He couldn’t bear to remain in Seven Pines Pass. He couldn’t stay as long as Jinny was there, a constant reminder of what he had once had and could never have again. He hated the Alliance, that was for sure. He detested what they were doing. He wanted to stand up and be counted, to give those bullies a bloody nose, to draw a line in the sand. But whereas for Mal and Jamie that was reason enough to do what they were doing, Toby was driven by a still darker imperative. Misery.
* * *
Once more Toby addressed the crowd of Browncoats in the mining cavern.
“Here is how it went down,” he said. “Less than a year after Mal and I enlisted, along with our friend Jamie Adare, the Alliance bombed the hell out of our home planet, Shadow. By then we’d all been through basic training. You all know how that was. Sometimes brutal, sometimes boring, sometimes downright amateurish. But we were all pulling together, all on the same side. It felt good even when we were slogging along knee-deep in mud, trying to keep formation, pretending to fire these broom handles they’d given us instead of guns because they didn’t have any real guns to spare, aiming ’em at an enemy that wasn’t there. Yet. Then came a lull. Our drill sergeants, some of whom seemed to be just making it up as they went, told us to go home. They’d taught us all they could. They would summon us when we were needed.
“The war was drawing closer to Shadow every day, like this big thundercloud on the horizon steadily growing bigger and bigger, more and more ominous. We were told to go be with our loved ones for a spell, and wait for the call. It’d be coming soon enough.
“Mal, Jamie, and I returned to Seven Pines Pass, our hometown. Jamie’s sister Jinny was waiting to meet us off the train, and she wasn’t happy with any of us, no sir, on account of we’d up and left her behind without telling her where we were going and she’d had to find out about it the hard way, through a wave from Jamie. Each of us had our reasons for keeping her in the dark, the details of which needn’t detain us here. However, Jinny and a few of the locals were keen to do their bit, and so they’d begun stockpiling arms, against the likelihood of the Alliance occupying Shadow. They’d put together a sizeable cache—enough to equip a platoon or maybe more—and had stashed it out back of a meadow on the Adare property, in a cowshed.”
Mal remembered that cowshed for various reasons. One was that he a
nd Jinny had met there for a tryst on several occasions. The smell of mingled cow musk and hay never failed to evoke strong feelings in him, even to this day. Sometimes it was almost, in a bizarre way, an aphrodisiac. Other times, it could reduce him to tears.
He also remembered the cowshed for the smoking ruin it had become, all twisted spars of charred wood sticking upwards, with a halo of scorched earth around it.
And for the burned, mutilated corpse lying close by.
“Jinny’s and Jamie’s parents knew what was being kept there,” Toby continued, “but turned a blind eye. Jinny took it upon herself to guard the arms cache round the clock. It was her way of showing support for the Independent cause. And here’s the kicker. She was guarding it that night when the Alliance called in a Zeus missile strike to destroy it. She was there when a space-to-ground projectile fitted with a thousand pounds of explosive sailed in from heaven and obliterated that cowshed and everything in it and everything within a hundred-yard radius around it. Including Jinny.”
Faces stared up at the platform, and Mal stared at nothing. All he saw was Jinny’s dead body, burned into a contorted, skeletal parody of its living version. The face like a blackened skull, jaws opened in a soundless scream. The cindered remains that were barely recognizable as those of the first woman he’d ever truly loved.
All these years, Mal had assumed that rage had burned away the last of his deep grief, but now his heart sank down into another icy pit brimming with sorrow so thick he began to drown. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
The crowd had fallen silent, as if in respect for the dead. Exhausted, out of gas, Mal hung his head and mourned everything that had happened between Jinny and him, and everything that had not happened.
After a long moment, Toby stretched out a hand and pointed at Mal. “When they told him that she’d died, the first words out of the mouth of Malcolm Reynolds were, ‘She was supposed to be safe.’”
Mal recalled the moment. Those were his exact words, spoken to Jamie and Toby. Someone—he forgot who—came running into the Silver Stirrup to announce the missile strike. They’d all heard the detonation not ten minutes earlier, and seen the accompanying far-off flash in the sky; and they all had speculated what it signified, whether it was simply the onset of a thunderstorm or something more sinister. The moment they learned it was a missile aimed at the Adare ranch, they sprinted out that way. The farmhouse itself was intact, save for the fact that every single windowpane in it had been blown out and the roof was missing several shingles. Mr. and Mrs. Adare were likewise shaken but unhurt.
Firefly: Big Damn Hero Page 25