Clash of Mountains

by Chloe Garner

  She didn’t ask if he’d done it, and he didn’t tell her he had. If the mare suffered for it, she’d find an adequate way of makin’ sure he didn’t do nothin’ so half-witted ever again, but she didn’t reckon he were that petulant.

  “Lise is getting huge,” he said. “Rich doesn’t think she’s ever going to be skinny like she was. Thinks she’s too good for us.”

  Sarah shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t look.

  Rich ‘n Wade talked more’n most men she’d met, talked about people. They’d growed up mean, them against the world, but never actually throwin’ punches the way Little Peter and Jimmy had. Would, if they had to, but mostly they was just their own in-club what you couldn’t work your way into for nothin’, and that made ‘em happy.

  Never made no sense to Sarah.

  “I mean, sure her Daddy’s rich and she’s got a lot of power in Intec, but if Jimmy was going to just bring us all back here, she isn’t worth any more than Kayla or Sunny. Maybe Rhoda is more valuable, because she knows how to handle livestock, but that really isn’t much to write home about.”

  “How much you s’pose the back corner of this wagon weighs?” Sarah asked. He glanced back.

  “I don’t know. Maybe a hundred pounds. I don’t know. Why?”

  “Don’t reckon it’d do you in, if I managed to push you out and run you over with it,” Sarah said, noddin’. “I’d have to back up to really be sure.”

  “What the hell’s your problem?” Wade asked.

  “You talk about your wife again like she’s branded cattle, I’ll do it,” Sarah said. He snorted.

  “You don’t even like Kayla. And, I mean, it’s what she is, isn’t she? Had to come with the right pedigree, or else Jimmy wouldn’t have ever agreed to let me marry her.”

  “Ain’t the same, and it don’t matter,” Sarah said. “Jimmy talks about people, tactical, and it ain’t got nothin’ to do with them as a person. You, you’re takin’ away that they’re people at all, on account of ‘em bein’ women, and I ain’t got no mind nor reason to sit here and listen to it.”

  “I don’t mean you, Sarah,” Wade said. “Everyone knows why Jimmy married you.”

  “And what reason would that be?” Sarah asked, still not lookin’ over at ‘im.

  “Because it was the only way to get the town to submit,” he said.

  Damn, but the twins were gutsy.

  She looked over at him, and the sparkle of victory points chilled on his face.

  “I mean, and you’re good with a gun, and…”

  Sarah waited.

  “And?” she finally prompted.

  “I don’t know,” Wade said. “Jimmy likes challenges.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “You reckon I’m just a particularly difficult and prizesome mount.”

  Wade laughed.

  “You said it, not me.”

  They’d been gone from Lawrence a long time.

  “What’d you reckon Kayla’d think of that?” Sarah asked. He shrugged.

  “She doesn’t care. So long as she gets to make pretty dresses and run around like nothing is wrong, she’s happy.”

  Sarah nodded slowly again, watchin’ as the station came into view, out on the horizon. She rested her elbows out on her knees, listenin’ to the beat of the mare’s hooves, thinkin’ about the first day she’d met Kayla Lawson.

  “Your wife is gonna surprise you, one day,” Sarah said. “Hope I get to be there when she realizes who she’s capable of bein’, and faces up to the decision ‘bout what to do with you, meantime.”

  Wade blew air through his lips, and Sarah felt the urge to elbow him in the jaw. Woulda put him out, most of the train ride. Just carry him on board, set him in a seat, make good on his ticket… Motion of a train was like to put some to sleep. Could be he wouldn’t wake up until the train hit Carson, things went right.

  “I love my wife, Sarah,” Wade said. “You shouldn’t think I don’t. I just see what she is and what she isn’t, and… I don’t know. Maybe you’re soft for women, and we just never knew it.”

  From Maxim, it woulda been innuendo, but she didn’t know for a fact Wade knew that language, so she let it go.

  Train were still at the station. They got there and Sarah saw to the mare as Wade went to buy tickets from the conductor, holdin’ out a hand for Sarah to pay him back ‘fore they got on. They took seats on either side of the aisle from each other in a mostly-empty train. Train had a wear to it what suggested a lot of use, lately, but it were clean and smelled fine, by Lawrence standards. Sarah dropped her hat over her eyes and slouched into her seat, listenin’ to what went on around her. Weren’t much to hear, but better than sittin’ with her head up like a hole-bird, broadcastin’ alert. Wade, by all signs, went to sleep.

  Took ‘bout an hour to get underway, and Sarah smiled to herself at the thought of Jimmy sittin’ down that night, by hisself, to two plain steak dinners.

  --------

  Jeremiah weren’t much different, no matter how many times you went. Bigger’n Lawrence, bigger’n Elsewhere, weren’t much more to say about it. Saloon, inn, chemist, general store, grocer. Land were a bit greener, bit healthier, and the people wore lighter clothes, seein’ as they didn’t have to ward off so much sand all the time.

  Wade got off the train with her and looked around.

  “You always hope, coming here, that it’s going to suddenly be civilization, but it just never is,” he said.

  Sarah shrugged.

  “Ain’t nobody here wishes it were Intec.”

  “Even Preston,” Wade said. “Better than here.”

  “You want Perpeto, while we’re here?” Sarah asked.

  “Jimmy takes care of that,” Wade said dismissively. “Have they even got cars here?”

  “Not ‘till Carson,” Sarah said. “No point to ‘em, town this size.”

  “If you say so,” Wade said. “Having air conditioning everywhere you go… I miss that.”

  Sarah wrinkled her nose, but didn’t say anything to this, walking off the utilitarian platform and startin’ off toward the chemist’s shop.

  “Do you want to get something to eat?” Wade asked.

  “You done nothin’ but eat the whole way here,” Sarah said. “You got a hole in your stomach?”

  Rich had started puttin’ on a few pounds along the way, but Wade still had a stretched look to him what made a parasite seem plausible. He shrugged.

  “I like to eat. So what?”

  “So, we have to get an order in with the chemist first thing, else we’re gonna be riskin’ pickin’ it up in the morning and hopin’ the train don’t leave without us. Can do whatever you like, after that.”

  He looked around.

  “We just walk?” he asked.

  “Your boots sore?” Sarah asked. “Ain’t that far, and we ain’t got nowhere else to be.”

  He looked at his shoes. Boots, yes. Hardy? Not entirely. They’d ‘a done fine, on paved roads and sidewalks, but the sand in Lawrence were hell on that kind of soft tread, and the dry was crackin’ ‘em through.

  “Need better boots ‘n that,” Sarah said.

  “You going to take me shopping, while we’re here?” Wade asked.

  “Hell no,” Sarah said, settin’ off. “Wouldn’t mind to point out the right stores, you want ‘em, but I’m not wastin’ a day in Jeremiah watchin’ you parade in front of a mirror.”

  Boardwalks in Jeremiah weren’t more’n a foot and a half off the ground. Whole place felt more domestic, less sturdy than Lawrence. Shops had glass out front, most of ‘em, and sold things what came in colors other than black, brown, and tan. Sarah’d get a new pair of boots and a new hat, so long as she were here, and she’d browse guns and ammunition, see if anything struck her interest. Weren’t a full day ‘a work, but she’d manage to avoid Wade as much as she could.

  “No,” he said a minute later. “If Jimmy is afraid of something happening to you, I’ve got to believ
e it’s because it’s possible, and I’m not going to come all this way and have it happen while I’m trying on shoes.”

  Sarah shrugged, keepin’ on. Maybe - maybe - if he were good, she’d take him in to the good boot store, the one the tanner ran out of his shop just outside town. He had too much demand to keep up with all of it, so weren’t none of his boots on display in shop windows, and he made a good business at it, like that.

  Took ‘em maybe half an hour to walk to the chemist’s shop and Sarah put in an order for herself and Pete’s family. The rest ‘a the homesteads were sendin’ their own folk to get their Perpeto, but Sarah had kept on deliverin’ it to Pete’s family. Guilt. Weren’t like her, but she couldn’t shake what she’d stole from ‘em, and weren’t nothin’ gonna fix it.

  She handed over the money for the Perpeto, then went back out with Wade, lookin’ down the street.

  This had been the big trip, growin’ up. She’d come twice with Elaine, and once with her Pa, and the number of people had been distasteful to her. The way their dresses came in pastels, the way they moved, the fact that she could hear conversation most everywhere she went. She’d looked forward to the trips, because she got new boots and new hats most every time she came, but she were always glad to be gone, and it were the same, now. Even back then, as Jimmy assured her that Lawrence had been much, much larger than her memory, it’d had a quiet feel to it, a slower pace. An earthy feel of man connected to bein’ alive in a different way.

  Since adulthood, mostly the point where her Pa’d been willin’ to put her on a train on her own to come buy Perpeto for him - only when he had the money for the stuff - she’d been comin’ with less and less anticipation. She’d been all up and down the coast, seen plenty bigger places than Jeremiah, and she weren’t much more impressed with them than anywhere else. It weren’t grand and it weren’t an adventure. It was just the next place down the track what happened to have a chemist. Weren’t gonna be, for much longer.

  “Food?” she asked Wade.

  “What’s good?” he answered. She looked up at the sky, beginnin’ to show color overhead as the sun hit the mountains, just out of sight over the horizon from here. Saloon’d be fillin’ up with men what wanted to forget the day and get through the night, but she didn’t much fancy sittin’ down to a table of food with Wade Lawson. Not on their own and not in any other company, either.

  “I’m gonna go take rooms at the inn,” she said. “They got a cook what does a fine job puttin’ together a meal.”

  “You’re getting rid of me again,” Wade said. “I told you, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Wade,” Sarah said, “you ain’t here ‘cause you wanna be here and you ain’t here ‘cause I want you here. You’re here ‘cause Jimmy, legit or otherwise, has a concern for my safety, and I ain’t gonna fight with him again over it. Don’t put me out ‘a my way at all, you bein’ here, much as we’d both like otherwise.”

  He shrugged, a fittin’ to his clothes kind ‘a motion, and shook his head.

  “I’m here. I’m not leaving.”

  “You ain’t sleepin’ in my room,” Sarah said.

  “I wouldn’t plan on sleeping,” he said. She dropped her arms.

  “You slept all the way here,” she said.

  “Everything on the train came here with us from Lawrence,” he said. “Now I’m watching your back in Jeremiah, and I’m going to do it.”

  She scratched her nose with her thumb, lookin’ to the sky once more, then shook her head.

  “You,” she said, finally, turnin’ to face him. “You got a bad habit of fillin’ space with words. Ain’t no need, no call, and no want for that. You keep your mouth shut ‘less I talk to you first.”

  “One of your legendary silence wars,” Wade mocked, and she tipped her head, lookin’ over at him.

  “You think that’s what Jimmy and I do?” she asked. “You may ‘a had another eight years with him I didn’t, plus the five I was in Oxala, but you don’t know him any better than you know that guy over there.”

  She indicated a stranger on the far side of the street, then shook her head again.

  “Silence wars.”

  Wade shrugged.

  “None of us know Jimmy. You can’t hurt my feelings pointing that out. He’s my brother, and he’s in charge. I do what he says, and I get what I want. I get rich, I get laid, people get out of my way when I go to parties.”

  And there.

  Sarah had an almost out-of-body experience, picturin’, feelin’ Jimmy standin’ up at the railing at their house in Intec, watchin’ over the family, seein’ them havin’ fun, havin’ their way with whatever they liked, but none of ‘em, none of ‘em, knowin’ him or much carin’.

  Jimmy were cold, and he didn’t need much, but even Sarah had Dog and Pete, while Jimmy’d been goin’ to bed with whatever strange came up the stairs suitin’ his fancy that night.

  Never.

  Never in her life before that moment had she felt sorry for Jimmy Lawson.

  If anything she’d ever done could ‘a moved him to strike her, that were it.

  “When Kayla finally comes to her senses and shoots you, I’m’a testify you had it comin’.”

  “Wouldn’t matter,” Wade said with a laugh. “You’d be the judge, anyway.”

  She nodded.

  “You keep that in mind,” Sarah said.

  He laughed.

  “Where am I going?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”

  She pointed the way to the restaurant, followin’ behind him, watchin’ Wade move for the first time in his adult life. He and Rich had been rough-and-tumble boys, but Wade had growed up slim, had a saunter to him, the way he walked with his hands in his pockets, an expectation people’d get out of his way that people saw comin’ and obliged, without ever meanin’ to. He looked like Peter Lawson, Sr. They all did, save Jimmy an’ Thomas. Family resemblance were strikin’, amongst all of ‘em, but Jimmy had a pale tone to his skin, almost blue, and freckles, while the rest of the Lawsons had gold skin. Weren’t dark, by no measure - not like Sunny or Rhoda - but just a different color to ‘em. Round faces, the lot of ‘em, where Jimmy’s were wide across the eyes and narrowed as it went down. On Elaine, it had been heart-shaped, with eyes that sloped down as they came to her nose. Wicked smart. It were the one thing Sarah had always known about Elaine. The woman was the smartest person Sarah were ever like to meet.

  Wade moved like Peter had. Big, open-fronted, like a cock lookin’ for a fight. Peter’d been angry all the time, had given that trait to his oldest son, where Wade and Rich were more devious, the type what were like to snatch a purse ‘cause it were too easy not to, rather than the one like to sucker punch a guy on the way past in the street ‘cause it looked like a good fight.

  Sarah’d seen Little Peter do that.

  They came to the restaurant, where Wade paid the hostess to seat them on arrival. Weren’t necessary, but it made a splash that had the waiter at their table as they sat, and got their food out faster’n were normal anywhere. Sarah ate in silence, watchin’, listenin’, lettin’ her mind do the work of sortin’ things out so she’d know what she needed to know when it came important. Wade drank two beers, then started orderin’ shots.

  Hell of a second gun he were.

  They finished, and Sarah went to the shop where she bought her hats, browsin’ for a time, then pickin’ out one for her and another for Rhoda.

  Woman didn’t have a proper hat, not really, and now Sarah knew she’d growed up with one, for sure, havin’ met her family. Were worse weddin’ gifts to happen in the world than that. She let the man put them into a box, then she went out, walkin’ away from town, away from the oil-fed street lights and the sound of people, toward the tanner. Road were well-enough traveled to see it by moonlight, but Sarah weren’t sure he’d still see her, this time ‘a night. Most shops closed ‘round full dark, but if she wanted new boots and to catch the train for sure by mornin’, she needed to do it tonight.
/>   She knocked on the door, hearin’ hammerin’ ‘round the side of the house, but knowin’ which were the door for custom.

  The big tanner opened the door a minute later, tippin’ his head at her. Weren’t a lot ‘a men around what could look down at Sarah, but he were one of ‘em.

  “Sarah Todd,” he said.

  “Why do you know me?” Sarah asked. He shrugged.

  “Lot of men comin’ through, these days, with that name on their lips. Didn’t take me too long to put her name to your face. You been comin’ here a long time.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “I know it’s late, but I got a train in the mornin’, and I ain’t had a new set of your boots in a few years, now. You got time?”

  “Come in,” he said, movin’ out of the way and givin’ Wade a quick look over.

  “I’m Wade Lawson,” Wade said. The man grunted.

  “What I hear is the only ones to know about are Jimmy and Peter,” he said. “And Peter only because you don’t want nothin’ to do with him.”

  Sarah smiled privately, going through the rough workshop to the shelves of boots at the back. Weren’t nothin’ much to organization, there, but they was paired and they shone with the workmanship the tanner had. Brass toes glinted light, and Sarah put her hands over the boots, feelin’ the detail of ‘em. She took down four pair of ‘em, slippin’ her feet out her own boots and tryin’ on these ‘till she found a pair what fit just like her old ones.

  “I’d be proud to make you a pair, custom,” the tanner said, and Sarah looked at the boots she had on.

  “No need,” she said. “I ain’t got no call for fancier than this. Them what work and what wear right is all I’m lookin’ for.”

  She got out cash to pay him, then waited while Wade continued to try on boots. On a whim, she nodded, goin’ to stand next to the tanner as he watched Wade.

  “I will take a pair custom,” she said, givin’ him the measurements and handin’ over a wad of cash. “Send ‘em to Lawrence, care of the general store man, there, name ‘a Granger.”