It was agonizingly tedious to watch. Elim could have fetched whatever that was in four seconds, if Hawkeye had told him where to look.
If Hawkeye could have told him where to look.
So he sat back down on the bed and watched as Hawkeye resettled himself, opened up his prize – a packet of matches – and set about fixing his pipe. It was a tricky business, trying to get the pipe filled, the match struck, and the contents lit with only one decent hand. He spilled some of the filling on his shirt-tail as he worked. It was almost impossible for Elim to avoid leaping up to intervene as he watched that first dangerous lick of flame spring to life.
But no, dammit: the man was blind and lame and addled to boot, and if he was going to make it, if he was going to have any decent life, he had to fix his own pipe. Elim needed that much. Hawkeye deserved that much.
And after the translator finally set the match aside and took his first drag, he breathed out a single smoking, profoundly satisfied word. “Okupado.”
Elim, who had neither the pipe nor the epiphany, took a minute to catch up.
Okupado. Occupied. Busy.
Elim exhaled – a huge, bottomless relief – and sat back.
Not ‘okay’. Okupado. Busy with something – working on something. Even if he couldn’t articulate it just then. Even if Elim didn’t have the wit or worldliness to understand it just then.
That was all right. That would be enough. “It’s good, ain’t it?” Elim said.
“It’s good,” Hawkeye agreed.
So maybe he wasn’t addled after all. Maybe he was still a little sorcerous – he sure had found those matches on the quick side – and maybe he still had more healing to do. Somebody had definitely been taking care of him.
Elim’s empty stomach contracted as he realized who that somebody might be… and what it meant that she’d brought Hawkeye here.
And Sil – where was Sil? Had he come into town looking for Elim? Why wasn’t he here?
“I gotta – I have to leave,” Elim said. “Are you gonna be all right?”
“Right as rain.” The sharper side of Hawkeye’s face smiled, as if he’d made an especially clever remark. And he held out his hand, as if he needed help in standing.
But when Elim reached down to help him up, Hawkeye made no effort to rise. His fingers closed over Elim’s wrist, warm and sure, brown on brown – equally, perfectly human. “We survived, emi.”
Elim didn’t know about that last word, but he knew a handshake when he felt one. And he could not have been more pleased to return it. “We sure did, buddy. Thanks for making it through with me.”
It was a poor, simple turn of phrase – one Hawkeye could have expressed better in three languages than Elim had ever managed in one. And it was going to have to do for a goodbye.
But after he’d gathered himself up to go, Elim paused at the stair, mentally fixing a last picture of his most improbable friend: an almost-ordinary middle-aged man, looking a little grayer but infinitely more satisfied as he rested there by the window, smoking and sitting and basking in the warmth of the new morning sun.
THE MAN, HAKAI, sat in silence thereafter. He finished his smoke, set down the pipe, and closed his eyes. The only movement in the room came from his breathing. He might have been asleep.
But his head did not drop. His shoulders did not slump. And cooling on the bureau was a sign, a pledge, a deadly-serious promise for anyone who cared enough to notice it. The match, burnt and cold on one end, had sprouted on the other.
ELIM FELT AS if he’d slept for a week. Maybe he had. Or maybe he’d actually gone backwards somehow – because when he ventured downstairs, it was like stepping back into an older, kinder world.
Fours’ store was clean again, probably cleaner than it had been in awhile. Everything was put back in its place, overcrowded but stacked and sensibly arranged. Even Fours himself was back where he belonged: behind his little jury-rigged counter-top, doing a thinner but otherwise perfect impression of the white-haired grandfatherly proprietor he had been before. There was nothing left of the nightmare-world but a faintly sour smell, and even that was airing out in the cross-breeze that drifted through the two open doors.
He glanced up from his ledger at Elim’s approach. “Your partner’s just gone to visit with the Azahi, if you were looking for him.”
Well, for a man missing his daughter, he seemed to have come to grips with it in blistering short order. “I was,” Elim said. “Thanks. And, uh, I was wondering...” He nodded up at the ceiling. “Is he gonna be all right?”
There was a thaw in Fours’ icy demeanor, then – his voice warmed with interest. “Well, it’s early to say just yet, but certainly we can get him walking a little better. I’m going to get that cane cut down to fit him, first of all, and I think with enough practice he could even...”
Then he seemed to remember who he was speaking with, and the window behind his eyes closed right up again. “... well. I won’t bore you with the details. Your horse is outside, as are your things, and I took the liberty of setting your boots out there as well. I don’t recall who sold them to me, but they’ll do more good on your feet than they will in my inventory.”
All of which was a silver-dollar way of saying Don’t let the door hit you.
Well, that was a shame. But then again, Fours’ life had apparently been a bottomless shit-heap since the minute Elim decided to go splatter a man’s brains all over his barn. He could hardly blame the old fishman for wanting to get quit of him... and hopefully Día would be back soon.
Now there was a can of worms that didn’t need re-opening. Elim squelched the first set of words that came to mind, and went with the old standby. “Thanks. That’s awfully kind of you.”
Fours went back to his ledger. “No charge.”
So that was about the size of it. Elim saw himself out to the porch and sat down to pull on his boots – and crusty socks aside, it was unutterably fine to finally, properly shoe himself again. Just having that half-inch of leather between him and the rest of the world was a priceless comfort: the kind of confidence that made a man walk a whole foot taller as he stepped out into the sun and strode around to see to his horse...
... and found that she had been out strumpeting again.
Elim stared at Molly from over the corral fence, struck absolutely dumb with astonishment. She was there waiting for him and breakfast, respectively, batting her big brown eyes as innocently as you pleased – and making no effort to excuse the blue-and-white finger-paints streaked in fanciful swirls down her sides, or the ribbons braided into her mane, or the turkey-feather in her forelock.
“Miz Boone,” he said, “where HAVE you been?”
“It’s not what it looks like,” said a soft, measured voice behind him.
Elim turned, and had his last bit of surprise used up on the spot: Día was coming for him, carrying a folded cloth and looking perfectly serene, albeit a little tired around the edges. She smiled as she patted Molly’s shoulder. “There was a bit of a get-together last night. We may have conducted ourselves with something less than perfect modesty.”
Well, that was business as usual where the lady Boone was concerned – but Elim couldn’t even pretend to keep up the joke. “You’re back,” he said, insightfully. “How... Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Día said – and while Elim didn’t believe that for a second, the look in her eyes suggested that whatever had happened to her had left a deep bruise, not an open wound. “It’s good to be home again.”
Well, that explained how Fours had suddenly found sense again – though of course it didn’t make up for anything. “Día, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe we just up and left you, and after you came all that way to get me –”
Her hand on his arm shut him up handily. Día looked up at him – and God, it was still so odd to see her without her hair – and he knew before she opened her mouth that he wasn’t going to like what came out of it.
“I didn’t,” she said
. “I’m sorry. I meant to tell you before. I didn’t – I never meant to come after you. I never intended to leave Island Town at all. I was only going to lead Halfwick out far enough to find you on his own, and then he – and then I got lost, and... and the point is, you shouldn’t thank me for anything.”
Well, that was...
That was a pile of horse-apples, to put it politely. Even if she knocked that off the list, he still owed her for trying to warn him away from Sixes in the first place, and keeping him watered and chaperoned after he went and got all hung up in it anyway, and talking to the Azahi for him – which he hadn’t had the brains to appreciate at the time – and more than that, too. Probably more than he even knew about.
Elim could have pointed that out. And then Día could have told him that she was just doing her job, probably with a whole bookish heap of words that all boiled down to a modest and ladylike aw shucks.
So he took a different tack, and nodded down at the garment in her hands. “Can I still thank you for bringing me my shirt?”
Día might have blushed at that. It was hard to tell. “Oh – er, yes, I suppose. I left it at the church by mistake, so I’m afraid it’s been sitting dirty for awhile. The stain didn’t quite come out, but it’s better than it was.”
If there were Ardish words to express how little that mattered right then, Elim didn’t have them. He held it by the shoulders as the folds dropped open – and boy, was it a sight for sore eyes. There in his hands was his own soft gray work-shirt, clean and regular and so perfectly him-sized that it was only willpower and good Penitent shame that kept him from ripping that itchy wool poncho off right there in the middle of the street.
Barn. He would go to the barn, have a piss and a change and a drink from the pump, and then he would see about Sil.
... in a minute, of course. All in just a minute.
“It’s just perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”
But that didn’t seem like nearly enough. After everything she’d done for him, and all of the negative nothing he’d done for her – what was he going to do, flip a nickel at her and ride on out?
Not hardly. “And I, uh – hang on a sec. I got something for you too.”
He didn’t, actually. His own things were lost or burned up, and he’d eaten most everything the a’Krah had given him. But that didn’t stop Elim from rooting through his bag, hunting for an improvised prize.
Not his lone moccasin-shoe: it had been a present from Way-Say, and that was a sadness he didn’t want to part with. Not the lock of hair he’d cut from poor Ax’s mane – that was for Will. Not his bag of bullets, because what kind of present was that for a lady?
“Here,” he said at last, and handed her up the last of the plums he’d picked on the way back. “It ain’t much, but I reckoned you might like it.”
It was a fair bet: they had been unusually big, especially for wild plums, and the three Elim had already eaten all tasted positively divine.
But maybe he’d chosen poorly somehow: Día stared and stared at the fruit in her hand, as if it had fallen straight out of the sky. “Where did you get this?”
Elim straightened and scratched his neck, hoping he hadn’t put his foot in something. “We passed a big plum tree on our way here – maybe a day or so back. Nowhere special, not too far from the road. It was a heck of a thing, growing out there all by itself. I didn’t know they could get that big.”
Día cupped the fruit in both hands, as if it were a newborn bunny or hatchling chick. She stared at it for what felt like an age – and when she finally tore her gaze away, she leveled such a look at Elim that it was all he could do not to flinch from the intensity of it.
“Elim, take me with you.”
He blinked, sure he’d gotten the wrong end of the conversational stick. “What?”
Día shook her head. “I’m serious. I mean it. If – if you really want to thank me... take me back with you.”
Elim’s breath was pressed out of him like air from punched-down dough. Everything else escaped likewise: the sunlit street, the fresh horse-fortified air, the distant sound of a woman’s scolding – until he was left with nothing but a dark-eyed, wildly hopeful face, and the sad task of disappointing it. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I can’t do that.”
“Yes you can!” she said, the second-loudest words he’d ever heard from her. “You’re a free man. You said so yourself. And I’m a grown woman, and I don’t – I don’t belong here anymore.”
The a’Krah must have wounded her even more deeply than he’d thought. Elim frowned. “Día, what’s wrong? Ain’t you glad to be home?”
“No, I’m not!” she cried. “I’m not anything! I don’t – I can’t fit anymore. I’m not the right shape anymore.” And it was a disconcerting sight to see placid, bookish Día gesturing in frustration, furiously fumbling for words. “There has to be somewhere else, somewhere where I’m not... where I’m just... where I don’t have to feel like this!”
Elim couldn’t say what feeling that was. Maybe there was some of it waiting for him back at his home, too. He took a breath, inhaling patience. “Día, you don’t know what it’s like over there. You don’t know what they’d do to you.”
Her hands clenched; a wisp of smoke trailed up from between her toes. “You don’t know what’s already been done to me!”
Elim couldn’t help it. He flinched, and shameful as it was, his first thought was not guilt or sympathy or compassion: it was raw, selfish fear. In that instant, he prayed that Fours wouldn’t hear her strident carrying-on and get the wrong idea – that Elim wasn’t about to be in a whole fresh pantload of trouble.
And wasn’t that always the way? There in a nutshell was everything he wanted to spare her: going through life always anxious not to offend the gentle-folk, always afraid of what would happen if you caught the wrong eye at the wrong moment. Elim glanced at Día’s bare head, and wished he had words to tell her how much more she still had to lose. Even if it didn’t turn her into someone’s property, the world east of the border would wear her down into two-legged prey animal: quiet and constrained, corseted and shod. Eaden would eat her alive.
“You’re right,” he finally said. “I don’t. But I promise you that this won’t fix it.”
Día’s face hardened. Her full lips narrowed, and her voice cooled. “You’re telling me you won’t do it.” And she didn’t need to say the words out loud for Elim to hear what came after: After everything I’ve done for you.
And even then, Elim couldn’t bring himself to say yes. He couldn’t give her a plain, point-blank refusal... because he did owe her, and because it was her life to decide about, and because any woman who could walk a hundred miles west through that desert and back again had already proven herself beyond all doubt: if she allotted on following him back to Hell’s Acre, there wasn’t a thing Elim could do about it.
And if he couldn’t be chivalrous and convince her for her own sake, he would just have to be selfish and do it for his. “No,” he said with leaden precision. “I’m asking you not to put that weight on me.”
Maybe he should have said that more plainly. Maybe he didn’t need to. Maybe that crinkling of her brows meant that she understood how it was – how the boy he’d ended in that barn over there would hang on his soul for the rest of his life, and how the old man in that house beside it had already given Elim a terrible glimpse of how much heavier that burden could get.
Or maybe she just hated him.
“I see,” Día said, her eyes already filling with clarity. “I won’t trouble you further.”
And just because Elim could have seen that coming didn’t make it any more pleasant when it finally arrived. “Día, you know it ain’t like that. Just cuz...”
But whatever she knew was already hurrying away with her, one hand clenching the plum, the other wiping at her eyes.
Dammit.
Which left Elim standing there by the corral, with nothing to console him but a pair of hairy lips at hi
s neck.
He glanced over at Molly, her outlandish costume somehow even more inappropriate than before. “Made a pig’s ear out of that, didn’t we?”
We, because it would be unforgivably ungentlemanly to say she... and Elim was half a gentleman at least.
Not gentleman enough to think of what kind of weight she was carrying, he belatedly realized. Not smart enough to think of asking her what-all had lit that fire in her in the first place. God Almighty, if he had a nickel for every dumb-ass word…!
Well, he would try to find her again before they left. He would try for a better goodbye. And in the meantime, he would try not to step in anything else.
So he let himself back in to the barn, amazed at how little it had changed from that first morning when he’d woken up there in the loft with a hangover and a hole in his memory. The battered stalls were all empty now – even the two mules were gone – but otherwise it was just the same.
Then, as now, he had wandered down the row, wondering just what kind of a mess he’d made. Then, as now, he had tried to get his mind right for leaving, for giving his companions a proper farewell and going on home without them. Then, as now, even a piss for the ages didn’t make him feel much better.
So it seemed perfectly mirror-appropriate to hear the footsteps outside as he finished up – not knocking and pounding this time, because the door wasn’t closed, but otherwise right on schedule.
“Hold on a minute, Sil,” he said. “I’ll get Molly tacked up and then we can go.”
There was a little creak of somebody leaning up against the doorframe – but that cool, cruel voice wasn’t Sil’s.
“Well, slow down there, partner.” The fishman, Champagne, flashed him a sharp-toothed smile. “What’s your hurry?”
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