by Sarah Chorn
“Your older brother, Cassandra. He was taken from me and your ma before you were born. We thought he was dead.”
“I have a brother?” I couldn’t imagine such a thing. I felt like my entire world was tipping under my feet. “Why didn’t you tell me?” But then a quieter voice in the back of my mind asked, would it have changed anything if he had?
“Don’t hold anything against him, Cassandra. It’s not his fault you didn’t know about each other.”
“Then whose fault is it?” I asked.
My father shook his head. “I don’t have time to get into it now. Ask him about Matthew Esco.” He studied me and his eyes filled with tears. It nearly undid me to see my father crying. “I wanted to be there when you two met, but now I have to trust you’ll do it on your own. He knows where your ma is buried. Find him. Will you do that for me?”
I was losing family. I was gaining family. It was too much and yet somehow, it wasn’t enough. I had a brother. There was a grim sort of solace to know that I wouldn’t be alone after all of this. That someone else out there was losing a father, too.
“Cassandra,” my father prompted.
“I will find him,” I said.
“Time to go,” the company man said, grabbing my arm and lifting me to my feet.
I was screaming, sobbing. I could hardly see through the fog of anguish as I was pulled outside. As I was torn away from my home.
I bloomed like a flower. Like an explosion. Like something being torn apart.
“I love you!” My father shouted.
It is the last thing he ever said to me.
After a few days of waiting, he heard the train blow its whistle as it slid into the station early that morning, and he knew Matthew Esco was on it. Anxiety twisted him up. He didn’t want to confront the man. He didn’t want to look him in the eyes and ask him why. On the other hand, he couldn’t imagine walking into tomorrow without knowing about his past. About his present. Without getting at least some answers.
He watched out his hotel window as men flooded the streets of Grove. Company men, come all the way out here to do Matthew Esco’s bidding. To see a criminal hang. Their voices were boisterous as they filled the streets, as though this was some grand adventure. As though lives hadn’t ended to set all this up for their pleasure.
He could go out there, find Matthew, and confront him. Have it all over within a blink. Instead, he waited in his room. Waited, because this was not a conversation he wanted over and done with quickly. This was a conversation that would take time. This was something that needed to happen behind closed doors, just the two of them. Matthew would find him. He always did.
And so Arlen watched life pass him by outside his window, and waited.
It took nearly an hour before he heard those measured footsteps stop outside his door. He listened to the muttered conversation between Matthew and the guards waiting in the hallway. They were always there, for his protection, he was assured, but suddenly their presence felt far more sinister.
His nervous tension was nearly making him sick. The knob on his door twisted and Arlen called upon a lifetime of training and hid his emotions. Tried to look as though he was not bothered by any of this, that the man who was his true father wasn’t about to hang, and the man who had kidnapped him hadn’t just entered the room.
Tried, and failed.
“Arlen,” Matthew said. His voice was stiff and formal. “I am pleased to see you are well.”
Silence settled between them and finally, finally Arlen gathered the courage to turn and face the man who had raised him.
Matthew looked the same as he always looked. Tall and slender, in a charcoal three-piece suit with a golden chain looped over it connected to his pocket watch. His gray hair was cut short, not a strand out of place. Even his shoes were shiny, despite the dirt of the streets. His small mustache was well-trimmed. He hadn’t changed a bit.
Not one bit in Arlen’s entire life. As long as he’d known Matthew, he had always looked like this. Slender, upright, and just gray enough to start showing his age. Not a day over fifty-five.
Why hadn’t he realized that before? Likely because it’s not something a person looks for in someone else. Matthew Esco was just Matthew Esco, his cold, distant, focused father. He’d never pondered how the man didn’t grow older like everyone else. It simply hadn’t occurred to him.
“Why?” Arlen asked. He’d planned a speech, planned some rant about truth and justice and how Matthew Esco was morally bankrupt, but instead, all he managed to get out was that one word. Those three letters. Such simple things, but strung together and thrust into the space between him and Matthew, they had the potential to move mountains.
Matthew didn’t move. Didn’t so much as blink. He stood there, stiff and still as a statue before a slow shudder rolled through him. “Why?” Matthew asked. He took a seat in the wooden chair that Elroy had sat in the night before. “Be more direct, Arlen. What exactly are you asking?”
Did he need to draw this out? Did he need to not only see the wound, but poke at it as well? Make it bleed even more?
“I am not your son,” Arlen finally whispered, his fists clenched. His eyes were starting to burn, but he vowed not to cry before this man. Not to give him that bit of his agony. “I’m your grandson.”
Matthew sighed. “I lost Lila the moment she fell in love with Christopher. There was no getting her back after that. I tried. She wouldn’t have it.”
“So you took me? She was my mother. He is my father. I have a sister. I have spent my life thinking I was alone in the world, thinking I had nobody but you and Sylvia and Shine Company, while all this time I’ve had a family out here!” He was yelling now. His nervousness was gone and now all that righteous indignation was filling him up. It felt good to finally release it, to let it go and watch it burn through whatever relationship he’d thought he’d had with Matthew. “My entire life is built on a lie,” he said.
“Come now, Arlen. What life would you have had in Shine Territory?” Matthew spread his hands wide. “It’s a fine enough place, but you would not have had the best education, the best tutors, the best opportunities laid out before you. You have always been a smart boy. You would have been wasted out here, on the back of some mountain with a roughneck outlaw for a father and a mother who threw it all away for—"
“I would have been loved!” Arlen roared. He felt color fill his cheeks, felt the veins on his neck bulge. A headache was forming behind his eyes.
“I loved you,” Matthew said. “After a fashion.” His voice was maddeningly calm, and Arlen suddenly realized another thing about his father. Aside from a very few times, Matthew Esco was always perfectly composed, as though emotion was something that happened to other people. Why was that?
He was on the edge of a realization, but he had a hurricane under his skin, and it needed a place to go.
“You loved what I represented. You loved the dynasty. You loved the legacy I symbolized.” Arlen paused, ran a hand through his hair. “I barely knew my true father, but he showed me more genuine love and affection in a few days than I have ever felt from you.”
“Christopher Hobson is not who you think he is,” Matthew said. He flicked a hand over the leg of his pants, picking at lint that wasn’t there.
“Then who is he, Matthew?”
“He’s an outlaw. A criminal. A murderer. Really, Arlen, you already know this.”
“What does that make you?” Arlen asked. “I have seen your record books. I know what Sterling does while he is out here, under your orders. I have seen the children who work in the mines. I have spoken to those oppressed by company law. There were five people killed out on the homesteads, again under your orders, just days ago. If Christopher is a murderer, what does that make you?”
Silence.
“Is there another term for it when you have killed so many?”
“You do not know what I have given up for this land, this territory, this legacy of mine!” Matthew shouted. A
rlen jumped, startled. Matthew angry was truly a sight to behold. His eyes grew wide and spit flew from his mouth. The veins in his neck bulged and his face turned red. “I have given up everything for this land. Everything. Then my daughter, whom I did it all for, told me she did not want it and what was I left with? One infant, who would grow into an ungrateful, lackluster man. I did it all for you, Arlen. Every bit of it, from the original sacrifice, to the shine wells, to this hanging that is about to happen. All of it has been for you. You have no idea what price I have paid. If that is not love, then I don’t know what is.”
Matthew glared at him. Arlen’s head spun. That entire tirade from his father had been startling. From the start to the end of it, it had been overwhelming. He was standing in the room with a mad man. He saw it now. He knew it. A man didn’t come unhinged like that if he wasn’t cracked, at least a bit.
But more than that…
“What did you do to the shine wells?”
“I changed the work orders last minute. Christopher needed a few more deaths under his belt. It is easier to kill a man when there is an army set against him. Then, all I had to do was wait just long enough before I sent you out here. I knew he would come out of hiding. He’d have to know who you were. Christopher Hobson is a canker. If left alone, he will fester and destroy this entire territory.”
“All of this,” Arlen gestured wide. “Is for revenge?”
“It’s not that simple. Chris saw how the Boundary was raised, and so he knows how it can fall. He is a threat to me, and to you, and to everything I have worked so hard to give you. I loved Lila enough to let her have him while she was alive, but after she died he was more like a ghost than a man. He was impossible to track down, always one step ahead of the law. It’s time for you to inherit, Arlen, and I will not have you inherit with a threat to your security looming.” He paused, fixed Arlen with his impenetrable gaze. “I am doing this for you, son.”
“And the people on the frontier? The people you sent Elroy out to take care of?” Arlen pressed. “What about them?”
“I knew Christopher was around. I had to draw him out so I could capture him. What better way to do it than with his family? It is unfortunate that so many died. They didn’t have to.”
“You set all of this up,” Arlen said. The implications were staggering. They made him cold. He’d always known Matthew was ruthless, but this was something else entirely. This wasn’t just ruthlessness, but something more. A single-minded determination that seemed to drive all his actions. And this was who had raised him, this man who saw no problems with seeing so many dead, just so he could end one man. What kind of person plotted events like this? Just who was Matthew Esco, really?
He’d made sure people were still working on the shine mines, so Chris would be responsible for more deaths, which would keep him on the wrong side of the law, and sway public opinion against him. Make him more desperate, harder to hide. Then, Matthew had waited patiently. Waited for years, until Arlen was old enough to send out here. This entire trip had been nothing more than part of Matthew’s cunning plan. Arlen had been the tool used to draw the outlaw out. Matthew knew Christopher would never pass up an opportunity to see who Arlen truly was. The battle on Annie’s homestead was just the noose.
All of this…
His head spun. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to throw up.
“I want nothing to do with Shine Company,” Arlen said. “Take my inheritance. Empty my bank account. Take me off your will. I want none of it. I am no longer an Esco.”
Matthew glared at him, the muscle working in his jaw. “I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice,” the man finally said. “I let Lila walk away from this. I’m not about to make the same mistake twice. You can kick and scream all you want, but I am tired, and the Boundary has needs. To stay strong, it must be fed.”
It must be fed? Like it was a living, breathing entity? How did one feed the Boundary? Arlen wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Dread walked its fingers up his spine. Outside, a great commotion was rising. People were gathering, eager to see the infamous Christopher Hobson died. And here he was, facing off against Matthew Esco, getting nowhere, fast.
“I want to say goodbye to my father,” Arlen said.
It was all so final. After this, nothing would be the same.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Matthew said. “Goodbyes do nothing but make the pain all the more acute.”
“And you know this because…”
“I said goodbye to Lila, and I have never stopped aching,” he admitted. It was, perhaps, the first truly human thing Matthew had ever said and it made Arlen stop and study the man who had always seemed as cold and distant as the stars. “Think what you will, Arlen. Perhaps I am the monster you have made me out to be, but there is nothing I would not, or have not done for love. The world out there is an unpredictable place. Up one moment, and down the next. From rich, to impoverished in a blink. At least with Shine Territory out here, and the company under your thumb, the entire world can devour itself and you will still be able to live comfortably, with financial security. Nothing can touch you.”
“What good is money when everyone I love is dead?” Arlen asked.
“Ah, the ideals held by the youth,” Matthew said. He stood up from his chair, straightened his suit, and glanced at Arlen. “You are hurting now, but someday you will understand, and when that happens, you will thank me. All of this, the hanging, the emotions, the anger, I understand it, but it’s a flash in the pan, Arlen. You can hate me now. Go ahead. I give you permission to hate me. It doesn’t matter, because after today everything, absolutely everything will change and you will understand. You. Will. Understand.”
That feeling Arlen had been wrestling with, that sense of knowing was hovering just outside his grasp. He felt like he was in an art museum, studying a huge painting but not understanding the picture because he wasn’t standing far enough away to see all of it. He needed a minute to catch his breath. He needed time to absorb all that had been said.
He just needed time.
But the crowd was gathering outside, and the day was relentlessly progressing. Fate was calling, and it waited for no one.
“I’m sorry it had to be like this,” Matthew said.
“Why don’t you ever touch me?” Arlen asked. The words were barely a whisper, barely a breath. The two men stared at each other across the carnage of the life they’d just torn to pieces, and that was all Arlen could think to say. “Why don’t you ever touch me?” He asked again.
“That is another price I had to pay,” Matthew said. “Power is lonely, Arlen. Best get used to that now.” Was that regret he heard in Matthew’s voice? He wasn’t given time to dwell on it, because Matthew abruptly turned and left the room. He left the door open, so Arlen heard his command to the men stationed in the hallway. “He is not to leave this room until the hanging. When it is time, bring him outside. He will watch it happen, and then we will go to the shine fields. Have someone prepare horses, to be ready at that time.”
“Sir, it will be done,” One man said, like a good soldier.
And just like that, Arlen was a prisoner in his own room. Today, he would watch the father he’d just met, die. He would stand beside the father who had lied to him all his life while it happened. He’d wanted answers. He’d wanted some sort of reconciliation, if not with Matthew, then with himself. Instead, all he got was more pain and more questions.
His regret was suffocating. If he’d only just walked away when he’d learned to Christopher was, none of this would have happened. If he’d only gone back to his old life, with the company. If he hadn’t been so damn curious and determined. There had been a hundred points since the train that he could have turned tail and gone another way, saved all of them from this. Sure, Chris would still be in hiding, but at least he’d be alive.
If only…
If only…
If only…
“When is the hanging scheduled?” He asked the
lawmen at his door. They were adorned with pistols and had plenty of muscle. Guards, in every sense of the word. Men assigned to keep Arlen in, and the world out. He was no less a prisoner for not being in jail. He was being kept. Now he understood what birds in cages felt like.
“Midday,” one of them said.
Midday.
Just a bit of time until the end, and he wouldn’t get to say goodbye. Wouldn’t get to thank the man for all he’d given Arlen. Wouldn’t get to look into his eyes, and call him father.
He went to the window, watched the crowd gather below. There was a festive atmosphere as people flooded the street from neighboring settlements and towns. Christopher Hobson was not loved. Had not been well-liked since his incident in the shine fields. Arlen watched as Matthew Esco appeared, walking out of the saloon, shaking hands with important people, waving to others. Soon, he was swallowed up by a sea of men in perfectly pressed suits.
Someone got out a fiddle and began playing a tune. Soon people were laughing and dancing.
His father was going to die…
And all Arlen could do was watch from the window, as strangers celebrated in the shadow of that empty noose.
I am tired.
I am trying to hold on, but I am exhausted. My spirit feels detached from my body. I am floating, and yet…
I can’t let go. Not yet.
Soon.
I taste blood. It is full of iron and salt. It is full of the stories of my ancestors.
Death is close, hovering at the edge of my bed, black-robed and imposing, and I am almost ready to give myself over to it. Almost, but not quite.
Edward is beside me. I open my eyes, but they slide shut again. “I’ll go get Cassandra,” he says. He sounds sad, his words low and measured. Just professional enough. He knows it is time as well as I do. But I am not done yet. There is one last thing I must do.
“Arlen,” I breathe. I feel Edward lean close, his ear hovering just above my lips.
“What?” he asks.
“Arlen Esco. Cass’s brother.”