by Bill Dugan
“Yes, I have.”
“So, you think your own son is going to shoot you?”
Morgan was stunned. She had said the boy was coming back, but not when. He hadn’t expected him so soon. He wasn’t ready. His eyes darted to her face. He hoped she would understand and offer him something, some way out. Katie smiled a bitter smile.
“The gunfighter.” There was such contempt in her voice he wondered that it didn’t sear the flesh from her lips as she spoke. “I won’t let you hide, I won’t let you run away. Not this time. Not until you’ve done what you came for, whatever that is.”
Atwater stood, but his knees were like liquid. He tottered and was worried she might think him drunk. She offered no help. When he started for the door, he glanced back at her, but she was still at the table, her hands folded on the rough wood. Her face was empty.
Chewing at his lower lip, he stepped all the way to the door, looked back again, and, when she hadn’t moved, accepted that he was on his own. He opened the screen door, his hand shaking as he extended it, and again when he let it go as he passed through.
A brace of partridge tied by the feet lay on the porch, and a shotgun leaned against the wall.
He saw the boy then, not a boy really, but not quite a man yet, loosening the cinch on a big chestnut mare. Tom, he thought, I have to remember to call him Tom, not Tommy.
Tom hadn’t heard him or, if he did, paid no attention. He finished removing the saddle, tucked it up on his shoulder, and lugged it to the stable. Morgan stood there poised above the top step of the porch, wondering whether he should go to meet the boy or stay where he was. As hostile as Kate had seemed, he felt somehow comforted knowing she was just a few feet away.
The boy appeared in the doorway and seemed to notice Morgan for the first time. He stopped, one foot suspended for a brief second. When it touched down, all movement ceased. The boy had become a statue. Morgan was amazed. Looking at the boy, even at that distance, he had the sensation of looking in an old mirror, seeing an image older even than the boy himself. They were spitting images.
Morgan tilted his head back and cocked it to one side. Tom did the same, screwing up his face to peer through the glare of the late morning sun. The similarity was overwhelming. Morgan had the sensation of watching himself as a young man. If only he had known then what he knew now.
Tom finally started to move. He walked slowly, his eyes still screwed tight, more in puzzlement now than an effort to see more sharply. Morgan was afraid to move. When Tom reached the bottom step, Morgan pushed his hat back so the boy could see him more easily.
“Something I can do for you, mister?” Tom asked.
“No.” It was Katie who answered. The screen door squeaked as she pushed it open, and Morgan was aware of her stepping near him, not too close, but close enough.
Tom looked puzzled. “What’s going on, Mom?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Kate said.
Tom looked more confused than ever now. And he was getting angry. “Somebody better tell me what’s going on, dammit.”
Morgan twisted his head to loosen the knots at the base of his skull. “Maybe we better take a walk, son.”
“What for?”
“Just bear with me.”
“Go ahead, Tommy,” Kate said. Morgan heard the diminutive and turned to look at her sharply. What was she trying to do, he wondered.
“Someplace you like, some special place, maybe, out there?” Morgan gestured vaguely with his hand.
Tom, still mystified, turned to look as if Morgan were indicating some particular place. He shrugged. “Not really,” he said.
“Fine, then let’s just walk.” Not knowing what else to do, Morgan stepped down off the porch and headed across the yard. He was nearly to the gate before Tom caught up to him.
They walked side by side to the creek, and when Morgan stepped down off the bridge to the bank, Tom stopped. Morgan turned to see what was wrong.
“Why are we doing this?” Tom asked. “I know who you are.”
“No you don’t. You think you do, but what you know is what your mother wanted you to know. That’s only one part of me.”
“I can think for myself.”
“But do you?”
“Damn right!”
Morgan nodded. “So why don’t you tell me what you think, then?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I’m askin’, ain’t I?”
“No. Not really. You came here to make yourself feel better, maybe. Maybe because you think you have some unfinished business. With me, or with Mom, maybe. But there’s nothing you can do here. We learned to get along without you, because you left us no choice. Now that we learned, don’t think we can ever go back, because we can’t.”
“That’s not what I want, son.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your son. You’re not my father. You were never a father to me. Hell, I look at you and I don’t remember you at all. I don’t have any memories, good or bad. If I could hate you for something I remembered, that would be different. But you never even gave me that. You’re some stranger who rides in here like he has a right to be here. But you don’t. I don’t know what the hell you want, but it isn’t here. You left me nothing, damn you. And there’s nothing here for you, either. Nothing!”
“What I want is to tell you I’m sorry. To try to make it up to you and your mother somehow.”
“Make it up to us?” Tom was incredulous. “Do you really think you can just snap your fingers and wipe away fifteen years? Well you can’t. Now, if you have nothing else to say, it would be best if you left us alone. Again.”
Morgan shook his head. “It’s not that easy, Tom.”
“It was before.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair, is it? I don’t have to be fair to you. I don’t want to be fair to you. I don’t give a damn about fair when it comes to you, and I don’t think you even know the meaning of the word.”
“But I do, you know. You think you know everything. That’s only normal for a boy your age. But there’s a lot more to being a man than knowing the answers. Sometimes, you got to stop and figure out the right questions. I don’t think you’ve done that yet. Hell, I don’t know if I’ve done it yet, either. But I got to try. And so do you.”
“The hell I do.”
“Damn it, Tom. Listen to me!”
“Why should I?”
Morgan took a deep breath, trying to calm his own anger and to get a grip on things. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He hadn’t expected it to be so hard.
“I could tell you what my father always used to say.”
“What’s that?”
“ ‘Because I said so.’ But that doesn’t cut any ice with you. I know that. It never did with me, either. But I pretended it made a difference. I figured he’d earned the right to that much, at least. But I didn’t earn the right. That’s why I’m asking you, not telling you. If you’re half the man you think you are, you’ll at least give me that much.”
Tom nodded. He was breathing hard, the anger still boiling in his gut, but he nodded again and lowered himself to the bridge. He let his feet dangle over the edge, and the water broke into little sprays where the surface grazed his heels. Morgan saw two little rainbows for a moment, where the fine spray scattered the sunlight.
“Alright.”
Chapter 8
THE RIDE BACK to Cross Creek was the longest of Morgan Atwater’s life. He kept turning the situation over and over in his head. Each time, it started the same way. It had looked so promising. Kate had seemed, if not glad to see him, at least pleased that he was alive. Even that was more than he had allowed himself to hope for.
But it went sour so quickly. He wasn’t surprised at that, not really. But he thought there must have been a way to handle it, some way that would have let him control the conversation, something he might have said that would have bought him some time. So he replayed the conversation over and over. He w
as like an obsessed playwright endlessly reworking a scene that had gone wrong. It wrecked the play, brought down the curtain at the end of the first act, leaving the remaining four stillborn. Dead promises, flowers never allowed to bloom.
It was his fault. He knew that, just as the playwright knows where the fault lies. But he didn’t know how to do it right. He had broken a life, two lives, three, and there was no way to fix them. Two had mended on their own, like badly set bones. The leg would never again move as it was meant to, the arm never quite bend the way God had intended, but they worked. His own fracture, though, had never set at all. He could hear the scraping of unknit splinters of bone with every gesture. His was a life that had been so completely shattered that it could never be set right.
That was the one incontrovertible fact that he had overlooked. Now, Katie’s home, the one he had hoped to build with his own hands so long ago, receding behind him as he rode over the crest of the first hill, he realized that nothing could ever undo what he had done. He didn’t want to accept it, refused to accept it, but he knew it was true.
Still, he kept telling himself, there must be some atonement, some way to make things better than they had been. He had not allowed himself to expect anything, thinking only that he owed a debt that he was finally willing and able to pay. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Thinking merely to soothe an old wound, he had succeeded only in reopening it.
But maybe that was a good thing, he thought. Maybe he had let out a little poison. Maybe there was still reason to hope. All he really wanted now was to go somewhere and stand up to his waist in cold, clear water and pull out a trout, a big, arching rainbow, and flip it onto the sand. With his son by his side. And Katie to sit down with the two of them to pick the flame-whitened flesh from the delicate bones. It wasn’t much to ask.
Or was it?
The town wasn’t much, either, but he’d be damned if he would leave. He wasn’t the kind of man to give up so easily. If Morgan Atwater had learned one thing from his father, it was that a man owed something to his son. And that, whether the son wanted it or not, he had to give it to him.
He would find some way to make it work, just long enough for that simple meal, maybe, but he would have that. He could close his eyes then and let them cover him over. It would be alright. He would have done the one thing in his life that remained undone.
As Cross Creek suddenly loomed up in front of him, he slowed his horse, wondering if there was some way he could justify staying on. Maybe a week or so. If it took longer than that, then he’d be willing to admit it would never happen at all. But he’d give it that much time, anyway.
John Milton was sitting on a chair at the front of the livery stable as Atwater rode up. The old man stared at him as if he’d never seen him before. Atwater slid from the saddle and offered the reins to Milton. The old man snatched at them, but never left his chair.
“Marshal was looking for you,” he said.
“What’d he want?”
“Didn’t say.”
“He want me to come by?”
“Don’t know.”
“You aren’t so damn talkative, today, are you?”
“Nothin’ to say.”
Atwater nodded. He turned toward the hotel. Milton called after him, “Still staying the month?”
Atwater said nothing. He realized he didn’t know how to answer the question. At the moment, all he could think about was Brett Kinkaid. He hadn’t liked the man since he first laid eyes on him. Nothing he had seen or heard was calculated to change that initial impression.
The walk down the center of town seemed endless. He had the feeling that dozens of pairs of eyes followed him from behind curtains and under the bottom edge of lowered shades. He knew it was foolish, but the feeling wouldn’t leave him.
He went straight to Kinkaid’s office. The door was open, but no one was there. He sat in the lone chair across from Kinkaid’s desk. He noticed the gun rack on the wall, a half-dozen long guns, mostly carbines and a single Sharps buffalo gun, were chained through the trigger guards and held by a heavy iron padlock. Kinkaid seemed to expect all-out war at any moment.
Atwater got up and looked in the back room. Three cells, their doors open, lined one wall. All three were empty. The other wall was cold, windowless stone. He sucked his teeth, and the sound echoed in the cell block three or four times, then faded away.
Moving back to the front office, he considered sitting down to wait. But there didn’t seem to be anything he could gain. Instead, he rummaged through the desk’s lone drawer, found the stub of a flat pencil, its lead rounded and worn almost to the wood. He scratched a short note, telling Kinkaid where he was staying and that he heard the marshal was looking for him. For a moment, he considered not signing it, then realized how foolish or egotistical or both it might look, and he scrawled his name. The point all but gave out as he neared the end of his last name, and the line he drew under it was just a leadless ditch in the rough paper.
Outside again, he stood on the boardwalk for a couple of minutes, thinking maybe Kinkaid would see him, but the street stayed as deserted as it had been on the way down from the stable. He had about a hundred dollars cash, and a letter of credit for one thousand dollars. That, and his horse and gun, were all he owned. But the thousand wasn’t really his. That was for Tommy and Kate. If he wanted to stay on, he had better find a way to make some money. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do, and not much he hadn’t done, but Cross Creek wasn’t exactly the crossroads of the continent. He wondered if he could hire on with Deak Slayton’s outfit, or one of the other spreads outside town.
Stepping into the street, he trudged back to the stable. Milton seemed to know everything that was happening in the town. If anybody was looking to hire, Milton would probably know about it. He found the old man right where he’d left him. The only difference was that he no longer had a fistful of the bay’s reins.
“Back again, are you?” Milton asked.
“You know anybody needs a job of work done?”
“Couple or three people.”
“You think I might trouble you for a recommendation?”
Milton seemed to mull it over. He hacked away at a willow twig with a tiny pocket knife. It looked as if he were trying to see just how thin he could slice the soft wood. His lap was full of inch-long curls, thin as rice paper and nearly transparent. Other than the accumulation of the shavings, the work seemed to have no earthly purpose.
“Check with Lyle Henessey, over to the general store. He needs a clerk. Unless that’s not what you’re looking for.”
“I’m looking for anything that pays.”
“Lyle don’t pay much, but it’s regular and the work ain’t too hard on a man who’s used to bending his back now and then. I reckon you are that, ain’t you?”
Atwater nodded. “Thanks for the tip.”
“I was you, though, I wouldn’t bother.”
“Why not?”
“The marshal figgers to run you off before you settle in.”
“Is that a fact?”
“He knows who you are. And I ain’t told him nothing. I don’t know how he knows, but I know he does, ’cause he told me.”
“Told you what?”
“I knew you was a shooter, but I didn’t know how much of one. Kinkaid told me you kilt near a dozen men, the last one not six months ago. That right?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I asked you was that right.”
“It’s right.”
“You fixin’ to make the marshal your next one?”
“I don’t kill men for fun, and I don’t shoot everybody who deserves it.”
“You sayin’ shooting Kinkaid would be fun and that’s why you won’t do it?”
“You might say that.”
Milton shook his head. “I wouldn’t turn my back on the man, I was you. You know he shot Deak Slayton, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Yessir. Shot him right through the
chest. This mornin’. Right there in The Hanging Tree. Blood all over the damn bar. Pete seen it. He said it didn’t have to happen, but Deak felt like he might as well get it over. And Kinkaid sure wasn’t gonna let the chance pass.”
“He just plain shot him, you say?”
“That’s about right. Deak drinkin’, as usual, and he run that youngster off was tending the bar. That’s what brought Kinkaid flappin’ them buzzard wings of his. Deak kind of pushed it, though, is what I hear. Like he wanted it to happen.”
“What in the hell for?”
“Only Deak and the marshal know the answer to that one. The marshal won’t say, an’ Deak can’t. Killed him, he did. Stone dead.”
Atwater felt his blood thicken and for a moment he wondered if his heart would beat again. He knew Kinkaid was a bad one, but this was worse than anything he had imagined. Last night, he figured Kinkaid would cool down, Slayton would sober up, and it would all blow away. But it hadn’t. It had a life of its own, and Deak Slayton just got chewed up and spit out. But Milton wouldn’t let him dwell on it. He said, “You ask me, I think the marshal’s got you on his list, too.”
Atwater nodded absently. He thanked Milton again for the lead, and walked on down the street to Henessey’s General Store. Now he knew why he’d felt the eyes on his back. It hadn’t been his imagination. They were all watching, waiting to see what was going to happen.
And he realized the worst was not really being sure himself.
Henessey was in. Atwater asked about the job, and Henessey hesitated. “I don’t know if I can pay what you’re looking for,” he said.
“All I’m looking for is enough to keep body and soul together. I don’t expect to get rich.”
“Then you come to the right place. I can pay you eight dollars a week. If you can work for that, the job’s yours. But there’s two things I don’t tolerate. One’s drinking on the job. That’s why I got a vacancy in the first place. And the other’s lateness. You show up late just one time, and you don’t need to come back again. Fair enough?”