He was in good company, with Red at his side.
Anything else was simply irrelevant.
As for Red, she’d made a command decision based on everything she’d learned thus far about traveling in hostile territory.
She couldn’t predict the future. Had no way of knowing which dangers might lay ahead for her and her partner.
Yet without knowing that made a decision which would have lasting consequences.
They rode along talking of anything and everything, as two long distance travelers are wont to do. Both shared a love of trivia, and tried to stump one another with inane questions.
“Hey, Red, I’ve got one. Do you remember the old comedian that shared your name? Red Skelton?”
“Vaguely. Mama and Daddy used to watch black and white reruns of his old show. What about him?”
“Do you know what he did when he retired from television?”
“No. What did he do?”
“He painted. Clowns. And he was good enough to open his own art gallery. My folks had one of his signed paintings hanging in our den.”
“Well, I’ll be darned. I never knew that. Hey, do you know what Red Skelton likely never did?”
“No. What?”
“He never repaired a barbed wire fence. Because he didn’t know how. But you soon will. Are you ready to learn?”
“Sure.”
“Then step down. There’s one coming up we need to cross.”
-14-
Their first night back on the road was gorgeous, lit by a three-quarter moon. There were no clouds to block the stars, and they did, as the song goes, shine big and bright.
After all, they were deep in the heart of Texas.
Red saw a shooting star and told Jacob what her father once told her.
“He said I don’t need a shooting star for luck. He said all I need is perseverance and a willingness to take risks. He said the smart people, the strong people of the world, make their own luck.
“And the others need shooting stars to help them stumble through life.”
“Wow. That’s kind of cynical, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. But that’s the way he was. It was important to him that I be as self-sufficient and independent as he was. I think he sensed there’d come a day when he wasn’t around to protect me anymore. And he wanted to make sure nobody ever took advantage of me after he was gone.”
“You told me he was murdered. But you never said how. Are you up to talking about it?”
“From all appearances, it was a heart attack. His left fist was clenched. He fell over, favoring his left side.
“If I hadn’t been suspicious, if my husband and son hadn’t already been murdered, I might have bought it. But it just seemed to be too much of a coincidence to me.”
“So they gave him something to simulate a heart attack?”
“Jesse Luna said it was Zarzapine.”
“Zarzapine? What in hell is that?”
“He said it was once used by country vets to put down heavy livestock. Horses and cattle. It stopped their hearts and seemed to be relatively painless. Some of the states which still have the death penalty tried it to execute their condemned prisoners. It was then they found out it wasn’t painless at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the cattle and horses they put down with the stuff couldn’t scream out in pain. But the condemned prisoners did. They screamed and cried and said their veins were on fire.
“Eventually all the states stopped using it, and the federal government finally outlawed it, for humans and for animals.
“But apparently there’s still some of it out there, probably in the medicine cabinets of abandoned veterinary offices. Luna bragged that he had several vials of the stuff. I looked through his saddlebags with the intent of destroying it, but couldn’t find any of it.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t telling the truth, though. He might have left it in Blanco when he lit out of there.”
“How did you know so much about Zarzapine?”
“Luna told me some of it. The day after he died I happened to be walking past a branch library in Lubbock. I found a book on veterinarian medications and found a whole page in there about its history.”
“So… after you buried your dad you went after Luna. How did you know it was him?”
“Rumors started flying immediately. I talked to a man named Ed Sloan, who blamed it on Savage. Savage blamed it on Jesse Luna. I know all three were involved to some degree. I used to wonder a lot about who did what and who was most responsible . But then I decided, who the hell cares which one of them was the brains behind the whole thing? They were all equally responsible. No one of them could have done the deed without the help of the others. Therefore, they’re equally guilty as far as I’m concerned.
“And they’ll all pay.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Not really. Other than to return to Blanco and scope it out. To see what’s different and what’s changed. See whether he’s hired any extra guns or bodyguards. He meaning Savage. Sloan doesn’t have the money to hire any protection, as far as I can tell. Unless he teamed up with Savage and they’re working together.
“Either way, it doesn’t matter much to me. I’ll take them on one at a time, or together. And if he hires a hundred guns, I’ll take them all on.”
“How long do you reckon it’ll take to get there?”
“We’re about five nights out at the rate we’re going. But we’re stopping in two days time to pick up another partner. She may slow us down a bit, but we’ll manage. One way or another we’ll be there within a week or so.”
Jacob was surprised at the revelation their ranks would be growing. And he was a bit skeptical at the same time.
“We’re taking on another rider? Really? Who is she? What does she look like? Is she pretty?”
Red laughed.
“Hey, I thought you had your heart set on me. Maybe I’m a little bit jealous now.”
“I did have my heart set on you. But so far you’ve made it well known that you’re not interested. What was it you called me back in Lubbock? Your new little brother?
“Besides, even if you did give me the time of day, all the other wolves are after you too.”
“Who?”
“Well, we’ll start with Jeff, the cook at the steak house. And that guy who rode out to the highway with us yesterday. The one who was trying to woo you. And I saw all the other cowboys at the ranch. You’d think they never saw a pretty girl before.”
“Well, thanks for that, anyway. The ‘pretty’ part.”
“You’re welcome, Red. But good looks ain’t everything. Attitude counts for even more, in my opinion. And you’ve got one bad attitude. B-A-D, bad.”
“Well, at least you can spell.”
“Tell me more about this woman we’re picking up. Maybe I’ll abandon any hopes I ever had for marryin’ you and start courtin’ her instead. She is single, isn’t she?”
“Oh, she is indeed single. Her husband was shot dead in front of her several months ago. As far as I know, she’s been alone ever since.”
“Good. Then she’s probably hankerin’ for a man by now. Is she pretty and sweet?”
“Well, I’m no expert on what men consider pretty, but I think she’s quite attractive.”
He smiled.
“Well, maybe I’ll just make a pass at her and see if she’s interested.”
“Go right ahead, Jacob. Of course, she’d have to be into younger men.”
“How old is she, exactly?”
“I think she said seventy eight.”
-15-
Beth Sanders lived in a wooden house built just after the Korean War. In those days, men were coming back from the war in droves, and many no longer had meaningful work to do.
Men were tickled pink to be getting back to work, for the recovery was slow and jobs still didn’t keep up with the demand.
Knowing a skill such as
carpentry or plumbing might be enough to land a job, but not to keep one. To keep a job one had to work hard and provide a good product.
Shoddy work was the best possible way to earn a pink slip and a place back in the soup lines.
The house, therefore, was build with the pride and workmanship one didn’t see in new-era homes.
The builder who sold the home to young Beth and her husband Silas made them a promise.
“I’m still trying to build my reputation. If you like the house and are satisfied with it, please tell everyone you know. If, on the other hand, you find something wrong with it, tell me. I’ll fix it at no charge.”
He was a man who was greatly confident in his product. And he needn’t worry.
For it wasn’t until five full years later that Silas mentioned to the man at a local diner that a couple of the stairway banisters had started to warp.
He’d mentioned it only in passing, and expected nothing to come of it.
But sure enough, the man was true to his word. He showed up bright and early the next morning with replacement banisters and the stain and varnish to finish them with.
“You don’t have to do this,” Silas told him. “We’ve been pleased as punch with the house, and the fact that a couple of banisters finally decided to warp after five long years is no reflection on your workmanship.”
“You may go ahead and fix them,” Beth added. “But we insist on paying you for the job.”
“Nonsense. I am a man of my word. I built this house to last a hundred years. I promised you when you bought it that it would outlast you and your children, and probably your great-grandchildren too.”
They finally came to terms. They agreed to split the cost of the materials: the banisters and stain and the varnish.
To pay for the labor, the builder agreed to let Beth make him a fried chicken and mashed potato dinner.
With a homemade blueberry pie.
It was how things were done in that generation.
Those days were long gone in the new century, when the power went out forever.
But the house was still going strong.
It sat there, alongside the highway, about three day’s walk from Blanco. It was the only standing structure on the highway, other than a two pumper gas station and the ramshackle motel directly behind it.
The road sign just south of the motel read:
MORGAN
City Limits
Population 10
An identical sign north of Beth’s house stood a mere two hundred yards from the first.
The sign was misleading, for there hadn’t been ten residents of Morgan for several years. Not since Melissa and John Bentley moved to Dallas and took all their kids with them.
By the time the blackout hit, it was just Silas and Beth, running their little gas station and motel, she tending to her garden and he tending to a handful of cattle.
The power outage hadn’t affected them to the same degree it affected other folks.
As children of the depression, they were used to doing without things.
And they were of a generation which knew how to take joy from the simple things: A starlit sky. A walk through the woods. A picnic under a shade tree. A skinny dip in a local pond.
Truth was they were getting along just fine until the Dykes brothers came along.
The Dykes brothers were thugs of the highest order, who shot old Silas in the middle of his cornfield, then made a slave out of Beth.
Beth had wanted to die a hundred times before Red came along to save her. Had told her so. All she wanted to do was to leave her earthly vessel behind and to join Silas in heaven.
No doubt she’d have gotten that wish, eventually. For the Dykes brothers were tiring of her and were mere days away from putting her out of her misery.
All that had changed, of course, when Red came through and saw one of the brothers abusing her.
Red’s retribution was swift and fierce, and when Danny Dykes foolishly pulled a gun on Red, he found out she was a faster draw.
It was a mistake he’d never have the chance to take back.
For there were no do-overs in a gun battle.
At the end of that day the brothers lay dead, at Red’s hand. She nursed the old woman back to a semblance of health and calmed her nerves.
“I’ll be back for you, I promise. And I’ll take you to another place. A far safer place where every man who comes down the pike isn’t out to do you harm or to take from you. I’ll take you to a place where people still know how to treat one another as friends, as neighbors.
“As human beings.”
She’d taken precautions, when she left the tiny berg, to protect Beth in her absence.
She’d stocked the old farm house with provisions to last a month.
And she’d boarded up the windows.
“Go outside only to feed and water the livestock. Do so only first thing in the morning, before the highway nomads are out and about. The rest of the time I want you to stay in the house out of sight.”
Red modified the house itself with some paint and lumber and a heavy dose of ingenuity.
And when she’d departed, she was confident there were few people on earth who’d dare to break into the seemingly vacant house.
For now it was seemingly abandoned with a pig’s carcass slowly rotting out of sight beneath the front porch.
Those hearty souls who held their breath long enough to climb the front steps would encounter boarded up doors and windows.
And a large sign which read:
FAMILY OF FIVE DEAD AND ROTTING INSIDE
MURDERED BY MARAUDERS
PLEASE LET THEM REST IN PEACE
-16-
Beth was bored.
She tended to hang out mostly in the upstairs bedroom she and Silas shared for over fifty years.
It wasn’t that she had any particular attachment to the room.
Not since Silas died, anyway.
Rather, it was the room which was retrofitted with skylights back in 1992, when a company specializing in such things drove through town and convinced old Silas they were a good idea.
And they were. Silas no longer had to turn on a light when his prostate went bad and he had to get up to use the bathroom three or four times a night. The starlight and moonlight coming through the skylights provided him plenty of light to get to and from the bathroom.
Although he’d never get a full night’s sleep from that moment on, Beth would sleep like a baby.
These days, since Red left her in the boarded up house and asked her to stay there until she returned, it had become Beth’s sanctuary.
Beth cherished the early morning hours, when she opened the back door and crawled out between the boards nailed over the doorway. She enjoyed the freshness of the central Texas morning as she tended to her livestock in the barn.
Then, having completed her outdoor chores, she typically returned to the house and to her upstairs sanctuary.
There she would while away the day reading, knitting, and napping.
And looking forward to the day when Red would return and fulfill her promise to take her away from this place.
On this particular day she was bored. She’d finished reading Gone With the Wind for the third time and was unsure which of her favorites she wanted to read next.
Perhaps something lighter this time.
But no, she didn’t feel like reading.
She wanted to get out.
The upstairs windows weren’t boarded over as the windows on the ground floor were. That allowed Beth to open them a few inches each morning to let a breeze flow through. From the ground outside, here appeared nothing amiss about the upstairs windows being cracked a bit. Anyone happening by would assume they’d been left that way by whoever boarded up the house and left the warning sign.
But it wasn’t the case at all.
That morning, as Beth stole quietly from the house to the barn, she thought she smelled rain in the air.
She�
�d quickly dismissed it because there wasn’t a single dark cloud in the sky. Perhaps the scent was carried in on a breeze, and the rain would follow later in the day.
Or perhaps she was just a foolish old woman and was mistaken.
She’d finished her chores in the barn and returned to her self-imposed exile within the big house. She’d climbed those long stairs, which seemed to be stretching even longer as each day went by.
She’d taken a nap and then gotten back up to sit in her rocking chair to read the last few chapters of Margaret Mitchell’s masterpiece.
It was while reading that very last page that her nose caught the scent of rain once again.
No, she wasn’t mistaken. She was indeed a foolish old woman, at least in her own estimation.
But her nose worked perfectly.
So now she was bored. She looked out the window of her bedroom, careful not to get so close she could be seen through the sheer curtains.
And she watched.
She watched as a major thunderhead rolled in from the south, covering the sky in a blackened pall.
And she suddenly went back to when she was but a young girl, dancing in the rain.
Perhaps it was her foolish side which made her kick off her shoes.
Or perhaps rather a desire to live, to really live life once again.
Whatever it was, she fairly ran down the steps and danced her way through the kitchen to her back door, where she turned the knob hidden behind one of the hammered planks of wood.
She giggled as she squeezed her tiny body through the gap in the planks, as she did each and every morning, and strode happily into the yard, where she stretched out her arms and faced fearlessly into the sky.
She stood there for some time, eyes tightly closed and enjoying the sensation of the cool rain beating down upon her, soaking every inch of her, seemingly bathing her in goodness and right. For there was something she couldn’t name which was infinitely pure and good about a heavy rain.
In seconds she was drenched but didn’t care. In minutes she was shivering but didn’t notice.
She was in a better place, a happier place than she was before.
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