by Sarah Chorn
“What will you do?” Mary asked.
“How do I look?” I asked, dabbing at my eyes, purposefully not answering her. Truth to tell, I had no answer yet. I had no idea what I would do when I saw Ianthe next.
“Like you’ve been crying, Cassandra.” Mary looked sad. “Ianthe will know something is wrong.”
“I can’t hide anything from her,” I answered.
“So what will you do?”
Love is a battlefield strewn with the corpses of hopes and dreams and still we fight, for what else is there for us to do?
I was born with a war raging in my soul.
“I can’t tell her,” I said after Mary walked me outside. “It would kill her. That makes me a horrible person, doesn’t it? She has a right to know, but I can’t lose one more person right now, Mary. I just can’t.”
“Oh, Cassandra,” Mary said, wrapping her arms around me. “You do not deserve this pain.”
We listened while crickets sang their lamentations nearby. I eyed the horizon. Fixed my gaze on those mountains, like teeth, just waiting to devour that big belly of night, scattering the corpses of stars with each bite.
I shivered. Suddenly, I felt consumed.
“I need to get back,” I said. Hopefully, Ianthe would be asleep. Hopefully, during her rest, I could gather myself enough to act normally the next day.
I hadn’t ever lied to Ianthe. It was not something that was done between us. We shared everything. She was not a separate person, but an extension of myself. It felt horrible, knowing I would look her in the eyes, and not tell her that her mother was dead, but I saw no other option open to me. I could not survive one more blow, and Ianthe’s condition was so fragile.
Mary watched me go.
The night was heavy. The dark, hot.
I started to go to the sanatorium, but my feet took me somewhere else. Around another corner. Down an alleyway, to a blue building I had never been to before. The door was thick and firmly closed. I knocked on it three times, and waited.
Three more knocks, and finally someone appeared. A burly company man with drooping gray mustaches and an air of status about him that put off a great stench.
“I want to see my da,” I said.
“Your da?” He asked.
“You know who I am. You’re not stupid and neither am I. I want to see my da. He was taken here.”
He glared at me for a spell. “Wait here.” He closed the door, and I waited.
He was gone for nearly five minutes, and with each minute, my worry gnawed at me. Perhaps they had already killed him. Perhaps they’d moved him to a secret location. Perhaps I’d never get to see him again.
Then the door opened, yellow light cutting up all that darkness. “He won’t see you,” the company man said.
“You lie,” I hissed.
“Not a lie. He’s in there, in the cell. Said he don’t want to see you tonight. Come back later.”
“Da!” I screamed through the open door. “Da!”
“Quiet!” The company man barked. “It’s night out here, people are trying to sleep without you wailing fit to wake the dead.”
“Da!” I screamed again.
He wouldn’t see me. Did he know how much he wounded me? I didn’t care where he was. Didn’t care what he looked like. I was lost and I needed him. I needed to look rest my gaze upon him and know he was still real. I was real.
I needed my father.
“He won’t see you, girl.” The company man studied me, and something in him changed. He softened somewhat, his eyes warming a bit. “He ain’t going to die tomorrow. Maybe not for a week. You’ve got time. Control yourself, and come back later. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
Control myself, he said. Control myself, after five people I knew and loved were killed. Control myself, when my father was in jail, waiting to be hung. Control myself, while Ianthe died.
Control myself.
And you ask me why I did what I have done.
You are all a bunch of fools.
They’d been at an impasse, glaring at each other from across the table when they heard screaming outside. Arlen got up and moved to the door, Sterling following on his heels. They slipped out of the saloon and into the daylight. He held a hand up, shielding his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun, and turned his attention to the road before him.
And he saw.
That scream, that soul-scorching wail was mirrored in his heart as he took it all in. He watched, helpless, as Christopher Hobson rode by, trussed up behind Elroy on his horse, going to the jail, no doubt. “We were never going to have enough time,” the outlaw had said before he’d run into the firefight.
No, they weren’t.
There was nothing but an end for his father now. Nothing but a noose, an eternity of silence.
He started to follow after Christopher and Elroy, but a hand clamped on his shoulder, keeping him in place. “No,” Sterling said. That, and nothing more.
“No?” Arlen asked.
“No,” the man said again. “Matthew is on his way here, and he gave strict orders if you were to be found. No wandering off. You are to be kept under watch until he arrives and can talk to you about your ordeal. He is very worried.”
Worried? Matthew? He hadn’t known Matthew Esco to be worried a day in his life. He didn’t think that was an emotion the man could feel.
“Upstairs,” Sterling said. “Got a few rooms. You’ll be kept in mine. I will stay at the jail.”
“Am I under guard?” Arlen asked as Sterling led him up the stairs. No jovial man now, no old friend. This Sterling was all business, all coiled anger, and intent. It felt like he had a gun aimed at his back, and this one would shoot true.
“There will be company men stationed outside your door,” Sterling admitted. He opened the third door on the left and gently pushed Arlen inside, following after him before shutting them in together. “But you do not need to stay there if you don’t wish. Matthew wanted you protected, seeing as you were taken and all.”
The room wasn’t fancy. One small bed, a piss pot under the window, a table for writing, and the stub of a candle. It would do, for now.
Sterling moved to the window and looked at the street below. “It was a nasty business all around, Arlen. You being taken by the outlaw. I can’t imagine what he put you through. Then all that business out there on the homestead. It had to be done. Matthew Esco ordered it himself. You understand, I’m sure.”
“What?” Arlen asked. The word stole the breath from his lungs. “Matthew Esco ordered what done?”
Sterling started. He turned slowly, studying Arlen. His eyes went hard and cold. “Matthew Esco said that this was the last insult he would suffer at the hands of Christopher Hobson. He sent a team out there, to raid the farm of Hobson’s sister and daughter once we had the information about the well. We followed orders, Arlen. We were to stage a situation that would draw Christopher Hobson out and then capture him, and we did that.”
“At the cost of how many lives?” He’d seen the messenger arrive when they’d been sitting around that table, give Sterling a piece of paper, which the man read before tucking it into his pocket. Arlen hadn’t thought anything of it, but now he realized that those had been the tally. The count. Lives lost, and shine gained.
Sterling didn’t answer at first. The muscle in his jaw ticked. He seemed to roll something around in his mouth before he finally whispered, “Five. Five of theirs dead. We lost five as well, with two more injured. They gave as good as they got.”
He felt sick. He wanted to throw up. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever be well again. Ten lives lost, all to draw out Christopher Hobson. Lives, traded in the blink of an eye by a man who wasn’t even here to see the damage he’d wrought and the pain he’d inflicted.
The world spun, and Arlen grabbed the wall to keep from falling. It was too much.
“They had an illegal shine well on their property. Been running it for years without turning it over to the company. Likely
made a fortune off what is ours. That stuff isn’t cheap, Arlen. They were loaded, while everyone around them lived in squalor. We gave them a chance to come out, to come willingly. We gave them an opportunity for peace, and they chose the business end of a pistol instead. Every one of them.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Arlen whispered.
“It’s the reality of life out here,” Sterling sighed. He suddenly seemed so very tired. He ran a hand over his face. “If we don’t make an example out of people like this, then we are telling everyone else that this sort of behavior is okay. And Christopher Hobson has a record out here. You know that better than anyone. He’s been losing the company money and sewing chaos for years. Shine Territory will be better without him in it.”
Arlen felt like all the words had been sucked out of him.
“It should be Matthew explaining all of this to you, not me.” Sterling looked at him. Studied him. “Right, then, I’ll be off. Food will be sent up for dinner. With everything that’s happening, it’s probably better that you don’t go…wandering about.”
He left, and finally, Arlen was alone.
The emotion he’d been holding back finally broke through the dam he’d built to keep it contained. He sat on the edge of the bed, face hidden behind his hands, and sobbed.
No, sobbing was too tame a word for it. Not sobbing. Not surrendering, but something more than all of that, and somehow less as well. He felt like he was shedding his skin.
The sun was setting by the time he pulled himself together. The saloon was starting to fill. He could hear loud voices, someone playing the piano, and plenty of laughter. Doors across the hall opened and closed. Moans vibrated through paper-thin walls.
He wasn’t sure how much time had gone by before he heard a knock on the door, two soft raps. The door abruptly opened and Elroy filled the room with his larger than life presence. He looked no worse for the injury he took in his shoulder. Had it really just been a week and a half ago?
Elroy carried a tray with food on it, some sort of stew that steamed up the room, a hunk of bread with freshly churned butter, and beer to wash it all down. Arlen’s stomach groaned. Elroy set the tray on the small table, and bent to the candle, lighting it. Suddenly, all that darkness was filled with that soft yellow glow. Moonlight spilled through the window like tears, like sorrow. Like the night was weeping along with him.
“You should eat,” Elroy said, pulling out a chair Arlen hadn’t noticed before and sitting on it. His eyes were dark and there was a large bruise on his right cheek. He was not the proud, jovial man Arlen had known before. Now, he was hunched in on himself. Dark. Brooding. “They said you haven’t eaten all day.” He pointed at the door, at the people on the other side of it.
“You look well,” Arlen said. “Considering.”
“The bruise will fade and the shot from the train went through my shoulder,” Elroy shrugged and winced. “It’s still stiff, but not bad. The shine addiction was the worst part of it. It was hard to come off of that. Getting shot so directly with it…” his voice trailed off. “It really did a number on me. I wouldn’t wish shine addiction on my worst enemy.”
Arlen wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“Sterling wants me to ask you what happened out there… when you were taken,” Elroy said.
“Is that why you are here? To question me?”
“Well, I came for a few reasons. I like to think we’re friends now, of a sort, and I care about what happened to you in that regard. You were a man under my watch and you were taken. I did not fulfill the obligations your father gave me, and I do not like losing men under my protection.”
“What are your other reasons for being here?” Arlen asked. He’d learned his lesson. Never take anything on face value.
“Really, Arlen? You want the whole of it right now? Can’t you just answer my questions and let the rest of it be?”
“No, I can’t. Truth to tell, Elroy, I don’t owe you a Fate’s damned thing.”
Elroy seemed to mull over this, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Then, “I wasn’t passed out when they dragged me off the train. I remember some things. Some things that just don’t add up to reason, you see. I remember the outlaw feeling you down for weapons. I remember him finding something that surprised him, and then suddenly ordering the train car to be cleared. What did he find, Arlen? What did you have on your person that surprised him so? He didn’t hesitate to shoot me. Why didn’t he hurt you?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer that question, or even if he wanted to. Now, his time with his father, from start to end, felt too sacred to share with someone he barely knew. Instead, he leaned over and grabbed the bread, biting off a chunk. “I heard about something happening out west, on the homesteads. Saw you bring in the outlaw.”
“It was a messy business,” Elroy said. His hands shook. “Didn’t expect it to be a bloodbath. I lost five men. Two injured. The only good part is that we got Hobson.” Elroy didn’t look happy. Didn’t look like a man who had just done something worth being praised for. He looked sick, gray around the edges. “I didn’t want to do it, Arlen,” he whispered. “There were women there and they… and we…” His voice trailed off, and whatever had happened out west replayed in the horror etched on his face. “I did what I was ordered to do,” Elroy finally finished.
He was clinging to the fact that he’d just done as told. Sure it was horrible, but he was nothing more than the instrument in another man’s capable fist, and ultimately, that was something Arlen could relate to. He knew what it was to be a tool, used for a purpose and thrown away without regard. He’d felt that painful moment of realization of his role not too long ago, when talking with Hank and Yoren at Rose’s house.
No man deserved to walk this particular road alone.
Elroy hunched in on himself, spine curled into a question mark, though what he was asking, Arlen could only guess at.
“Tell me what happened on the train, Arlen,” Elroy finally asked after a measure of quiet. His eyes were red, his hands trembling. This was not a man off the shine, not all the way. Not yet. Arlen could still see the addiction running through him, could see how he was aching for a fix. Now, with this tragedy bending his back, he could only guess at how Elroy would handle the next few days.
Whoever had sent him out to lead such a disastrous raid had just destroyed him.
“Is that why you are really here? To hear about what happened on the train?” Arlen asked, adjusting his legs.
“No,” Elroy whispered. “ I needed a place to go. A place where the screaming in my head wouldn’t be quite so loud.”
“When I was a boy,” Arlen finally said, “and I took ill, my governess, Sylvia, would tell me a story. I never understood why she told it at the time, but I think I do now. Sometimes a person needs to get out of their own skin. Sometimes a dream and the horizon are the best medicine. Do you want to hear the story, Elroy?”
“Anything,” the man replied. “Please. Give me something to hold on to.”
The naked desperation in those words filled Arlen with ice.
“There’s a land,” he said. “Far, far away, across an ocean with a whirlpool for a heart. This is where the world starts, and the world ends. It’s called Sefate.” Elroy had calmed down, his hands crossed over his breast, rocking himself back and forth gently, head bowed and eyes closed as he listened. “Sefate is not a place you or I would recognize, for it is not as much a land, as it is a tree.”
“A tree?” Elroy asked.
“Yes,” Arlen replied. “A tree, shooting out from the middle of the world, so large, so sprawling, entire civilizations exist on but one of its branches. Can you imagine such a thing? There is nothing but ocean around its base, and people, like you or I, living their lives on its limbs. As a boy, I used to vow I would run away and find Sefate. I wanted to live there, with nothing but the beating heart of the world under my feet.”
“Sefate,” Elroy said. “ I should like to find a place like tha
t. It sounds very peaceful.”
Quiet filled the room.
“Arlen,” Elroy finally asked, his voice thin and quivering. “Am I a bad person?”
Was he? Were any of them? Who was at fault, the tool or the man welding it?
“Who gave you the orders?” Arlen asked. He already knew the answer, but he had to hear it. Had to hear that name pass Elroy’s lips. There would be no more denying it. No more dancing around the facts. Now, he had to know. There would be no more running away. It was time for him to make a stand.
Elroy sighed, shifted on his chair. “Matthew Esco sent the letter to the transfer office here in Grove just yesterday. ”
“Did he specifically request you?”
“There was no one else to go, Arlen. Sterling had to stay in town in case Hobson came back, or you, or both. I’m the highest-ranked out of the rest of the company men here.”
He might as well have stuck a knife in Elroy’s heart and watched him die.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Elroy said again. He was shaking, his entire body quaking so badly he fell off the chair and crashed to the floor. “I didn’t want to kill those people. I didn’t want any part of it.”
He was openly weeping now, curled up on his side, head pillowed on his arms.
He should walk away. Elroy had done horrible things. He deserved his pain. On the other hand, he was a broken man. Nothing more than a tool, cruelly used, and he would pay for that the rest of his life. He was not given a choice in the manner of his suffering.
Arlen got on the floor right next to Elroy, gathered the man up in his arms. “I’m Christopher Hobson’s son,” he whispered as he ran his fingers through Elroy’s dark hair. He wasn’t sure if the man was listening to him. Wasn’t sure if his words even mattered. Elroy grew calm under Arlen’s touch. “Didn’t know it until he stopped the train.”
Tentatively, Arlen told Elroy the story of his life, the story as it had been made clear to him. Slowly, he unfolded himself for Elroy to know. He bared his soul, let Elroy see all of him, held nothing back. He was one broken man showing another his pain.