"Fireflies" by Corey Minor
A heavy mist covers the ground of the creek; the rocks beneath it are only barely visible, and Boyd fights the compulsion to step on tiptoe as he dismounts his horse. He removes from his saddle bags a small, tight sack that is strung like a satchel. Loosening the string, he looks inside; he has several biscuits, wrapped in cloth so that they look like fuzzy white cubes stacked one over the other. Beside the food is the dark handle of a gun, a revolver, its barrel not visible but pointing through to the bottom of the bag, where two jars, one of milk and one strawberry, rest. Something clots in Boyd’s throat at the sight of the gun handle. He coughs and swallows it. He reaches a hand into the bag and removes a biscuit from the top of the pile, unwraps it and chews it complacently as he walks along the creek.
The winter air snaps at Boyd; he smoothens the long sleeves of his black cotton coat, tangles some fingers in his beard, hoping to coax the cold out. Boyd had spent the past few weeks growing it out, and had stood in front of his sister’s mirror for hours combing it, trying to strike the perfect balance of rugged and dangerous without coming off as unwashed and homeless. Every morning Boyd came down to breakfast, Bast had something disparaging to say. “Look like you pulled your head out of a buffalo’s buttocks,” she said, “look like you been raised by a pack of grizzlies.” Boyd didn’t tell her his reasons for growing the beard, and he kept it that way until a few mornings ago, after which she fought with him day-in-and-out, until today.
Several colossal rocks rest on Boyd’s side of the creek; he props his bag against one as he continues to eat and walks nearer to the waters. The sound of the water running beneath the fog is like the rattling of loose teeth in a mouth. The heads of blades of grass rise above the fog; Boyd steps carefully so as not to disturb the croaking of toads who sit low in the moss and the rock. They are his friends; Boyd recalls how they had talked to him at night, as a boy, when the timber halls of his home were suffocating and he needed space away from his sister. He had come to this place and did not watch the stars, though the conditions of the creek were perfect for stargazing. No, Boyd came to stare at the shore of the opposite side of the creek.
On summer nights Boyd watched his Aunt, Evelyn, travel along the creek. She was a bounty hunter, and favored the creek path on her visits into town. She was always on horseback, and often had a man or woman hogtied and hoisted over its rear. They cursed and groaned louder than the toads croaked. Evelyn’s hip holstered a revolver, long and black; its golden accents glimmered in the moonlight. Her hat was low over her eyes and from her mouth hung the smoldering shaft of a cigar. She rode past the creek in the midst of fireflies; she huffed, and blew grey onto their wings.
Boyd finishes his biscuit and lets the cloth fall onto the toads. They crowd at his feet. He steps lightly over the mist and heads back to his solitary rock, slumps and sits cross-legged next to his bag. The creek this morning is like a graveyard; trees stand at the fringes of the creek like sentinels, tall and dead in the face. Boyd had expected, while riding the cold path to the creek from his home, to find his visit rejuvenating. He needed the respite, as he had left his house on the prairie daunted, bruised and heavy. At the breakfast table, his sister, Bast, had torn into him. She was waiting at the head of the breakfast table when Boyd walked into the dining room, satchel slung across his back. Her face was pallid over a plate of grits. She did not look at him as he gently opened cupboards, but when he pulled a jar of strawberry jam down from a shelf, she slammed a foot against the floorboard and stammered, in her soft but biting way, “Goddamnit, Boyd.”
“What?” Boyd muttered, lowering the jam into the satchel’s mouth.
“Don’t ‘what’. You know well ‘what’ I mean.”
“You had your say last night, and the night before that. Don’t need no more outbursts.”
“Goddamn it!” Bast slammed her fist onto the table and her plate jumped, making a small rattle like shaken bones.
Boyd turned to look at her. “No. don’t say no more.” Bast was dour in her seat, a ghost, her apparition a mixture of shadows Boyd recognized as his sister; her cheeks were sullen, shaded red with a fever she had since she turned twenty. Bast always appeared sickly, but she had a look of half-way death. Her features fell part-ways into the grave; a deep purple scarf threatened her throat and a midnight black blouse engulfed her chest.
Bast dipped a finger into her grits and flicked it, steaming, in Boyd’s direction. “Stay home,” she said, monotone.
Boyd slid a jar of milk into his satchel. “Won’t have a home, you don’t let me go.”
Bast groaned.
“What you want me to say, Bast? We need the money.”
At “money,” Bast looked up from her plate and into Boyd’s chest. “You know damned well this ain’t about money.”
“We need the money.”
“Quit saying that.”
“Those men ain’t gonna let us off – they’ll be back – you know what folks their kind do, outlaws? They murder livestock, they torch crops, they set whole goddamned houses on fire and make folk, folk like us, to cook with them.”
“They ain’t a problem.” Bast said, and forked a mouthful of grits.
Several months ago men had appeared at their doorstep, dirty and wearing guns, demanding payment for protection. They promised to ward against the “certain” mishaps that were wont to befall poor prairie folk like Bast and Boyd. They were holed up in the nearby town, and had convinced the people there, too, to cough up cash for insurance against disaster. The men were thieves, and extortionists, and had killed the Marshal but left the two deputies alive, as they were considered (by both the town and the killers) to be equally harmless and incompetent. The deputies performed no arrests; their office received bounty posters which they swept into the corners of jail cells. The siblings’ cousin, Crowley, Evelyn’s son and the owner of a gunshop in town, told Boyd that one morning he saw the deputies on their knees, arranging the piles of posters into careful stacks inside the cells. He asked them what the hell they were doing, and they told him that the outlaws found the state of the Marshal’s office “reprehensible,” and ordered that they have the place somewhat tidy by the evening or be shot through the kidney.
“Bast.” Boyd said, setting aside a jar of milk.
“We could leave. Don’t need to cook.”
“Now, no…” Boyd played with the string on his satchel.
“You ain’t a bounty hunter.”
In the mouth of the bag Boyd could see the cool black finish of a pistol.
“You ain’t Evelyn,” Bast said, meeting Boyd’s dusty brown eyes.
Next to the pistol was a tall roll of paper, a poster from one of the deputies’ jail cells.
“You ain’t Auntie.”
Boyd reached into the bag and pulled out the revolver. The barrel snagged on the fabric but the gravity of his gesture was not lost; Bast froze.
“That ain’t yours to have. How’d Crowley give that to you?”
Boyd let out the chamber and made it spin. The whir was soft, mechanical. His gun belt and bandolier was already packed into his horse’s saddle bags but he thought then that if he had one bullet he would load it, just to show Bast that he knew, he knew what he was doing, and he knew what he was in for.
At least, he thought so.
Boyd dozes against the rock, allows a toad to make herself comfortable on his thigh. The day passes slowly here; the fog rises from the ground to choke the sky and the sun is a bleary orb in the haze, too distant to have any bearing on the creek. It illuminates the sky only barely, and the creek’s water vaguely glimmers where it used to shine. It is unlike the nights he spent here as a boy; everything is cruel, and distant. The realization bites at Boyd and he swats the toad from his leg, likely an old friend, and it croaks and leaps its way back into the rocks and the grass.
Boyd curses under his breath; Bast had hurt him. His heart is raw. He pulls curtains over it, ties the arteries like wrists with leather straps, but it wriggles and worms for every minute since he left his sister at the porch.
He reaches into the bag to find another biscuit, but his hand brushes against the tall, rolled poster bundled next to his gun. Boyd pulls it out.
The paper is rough, and heavy. Unfolding it, it is like opening a scroll; Boyd has studied the poster for many hours over many nights, so the process isn’t new to him, but the act still has a gravity that makes him uneasy. With the poster open in his hands, Boyd begins his ritual: he gives the face illustrated on the poster a quick glance, then blinks several times before looking again, this time concentrating closely on the features of his target, a woman. He starts from the head of hair: it is set in buns. The artist has drawn stray wires of it at the fringes, as if to say that its unkemptness is a key feature. Boyd fancies it a dark brunette, as it suits her and he enjoys a brunette woman. The buns frame a severe face; the lips are stern and full. The mouth is drawn wide and is reined in by moundy cheeks, freckled and craggy like the spines of mountains. Her eyes are deep-set and half open, drawn mid-blink. Boyd draws a finger from one sketched eye to the other in a slash. He means it as an innocent gesture but he imagines that the eyes bleed, his finger like a knife. He shivers.
Looking away from the eyes, Boyd turns his attention to the block of letters above and below the drawing. At the heading one word is printed, in large, black typeface: WANTED; and just below it: ALIVE OR DEAD. Beneath the drawing of the woman is a paragraph of text that reads: REWARD. SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS. FOR THE HEAD OF CALISTO. KNOWN MURDERER AND OCCASSIONAL ARSONIST. REVILED PIMP AND EXTORTIONIST. CURRENTLY THE MISTRESS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT MIDNIGHT BORDELLO, LOCATED SOME SEVERAL LEAGUES FROM THE TOWN BOGSTON. CONSIDERABLY DANGEROUS. RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS OF THREE FEDERAL MARSHALS, TWO SHERIFFS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE DEPUTIES. IS OF SAVAGE BLOOD, THOUGHT TO BE 3/4THS CHEROKEE. REMAINDER NEGRO. SPEAKS ENGLISH FLUENTLY. THOUGHT TO BE UNHINGED. REWARD OF SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS STANDS WHETHER BROUGHT IN DEAD OR ALIVE. BOUNTY WILL BE HONORED AT ANY SHERIFF OR MARSHAL’S OFFICE IN PROXIMITY TO BOGSTON, OR AT ANY TOWN WITH A MARSHAL AND TELEGRAPH OPERATOR.
Seven hundred dollars is enough to pay the outlaws for their “protection”. It’ll be a simple job: go to the bordello, find Calisto, and bring her back. Alive, if possible, but Boyd knows that the use of force might be necessary. He quivers at the thought; Boyd is not a violent man. Acts of violence stick to him; he remembers the names of the hogs at home he’s had to raise and slaughter. Charlie, Cynthia. But something is pulling him, regardless. Boyd feels…obligation, or no, a passion for the idea of bounty hunting. There are easier ways to earn money – slower ones, for sure, but ones which do not require him to travel far from home or to spill blood. And yet, when those men had shown up at his doorstep, muddy in the rain, he had thought of Evelyn.
Bast had reached the door before he could, as Boyd had been too preoccupied finishing a steak and a glass of milk to be bothered with visitors. Boyd should have answered the door himself. Visitors at night in a storm deserved precaution; but steak and milk had a way of handicapping his good sense. Boyd heard the front door creak on its hinges as he finished his glass. His sister mumbled a greeting; she was always soft-spoken, and the rainfall and intermittent claps of thunder did her voice no favors. Boyd was within several steps of the threshold when he heard the response; the voice was like sandpaper and rock: “And greetin’s to you, miss, on this fine evening,” a man said, and Boyd made out the sound of sparse chuckling. Most of the men were crowded on the doorstep, under the porch roof. The ones that weren’t were caught in the rain, and rainwater pooled and spilled out of the hems of their hats while they fidgeted. Almost every one of them was smoking a cigarette, except for the man who addressed Bast, who was standing at the front, nearly inside of the doorway. He huffed and blew a cloud of smoke that touched Bast’s right cheek. “Darlin’,” he said, glancing briefly at Boyd, “this your husband?”
“Brother.” Bast mumbled. She stood rigid at the door. Her posture was firm, and Boyd knew she was putting on a front; she was staring into the man’s eyes but was also gripping the doorknob so hard that her knuckles were red. She could tell, too, that the men were dangerous.
“Oh.” The man said in response, bemused. “That’s quite an arrangement.”
There was more chuckling from the men under the roof.
“What you want?” Boyd said, and stepped forward a bit. The man audibly groaned. He probably hoped to get somewhere with Bast. He said nothing.
“We were just settling down to eat.”
The man blew another bout of smoke into Bast’s face before answering. “Well, boy, we’re the new marshal’s force ‘round here.”
“Marshal’s force?”
“That’s what I said.” He removed his hat and shook the rain from it, then popped it back on. “It’s a new co-op. Marshal Marston has, eh, stepped down, recently, and we’re arrived to fill his station. We were in the area and thought we would introduce ourselves. Make ourselves friendly-like.”
“Well it’s nice to have met you.” Boyd moved to shut the door, but the man cleared his throat and slightly opened a side of his coat to reveal a pistol. It looked dirty in the rain, as dirty as the men. The porchlight dimly lit the outlaws, and in the lighting the men and the gun seemed to be made of the same material. The expressions of the men and the expression of the gun were the same; it had the same tired-iron grin, the same heavy shoulders; it seemed to bemoan the rain as much as the men who were caught in it, even though it was holstered and safely under the roof. The man dragging the cigar wasn’t so much the leader as the gun was. He and the men were more like specters, ghouls under the thrall of the weapon. Thunder clapped and the ghoul in front sucked his teeth.
“Hey. We also thought now would be an opportune time to discuss fees. Y’see, our operation is expensive to run, and we think it’s more’an fair that the people pitch in a bit to cover the costs of our service. Call it a one-time tax.” The man took the cigar from his mouth and turned it in his fingers while one of the followers piped up to explain the terms of their marshal’s program; He had a missing front tooth so the middles and ends of his sentences were accentuated with light whistles. They required a $650 fee to enlist their services; the men would ward against any danger Providence sends their way, save for natural disaster. Boyd and Bast could, of course, refuse payment and go at it on their own, but the life of the farmer is so easily upturned by sudden misfortune that it would be foolish not to at least consider buying protection.
All through the speech the man in front turned the cigar in his fingers. The shaft burned and the embers in the rain were brilliant in Boyd’s eyes; they flit about in the wind, on wings. He thought of the fireflies by the creek and of Evelyn riding through, herself smoking a cigar, her horse heavy with the load of men like the ones on his porch. Evelyn’s gun had shone in the moonlight; it was her essence. She triumphed over her marks because her power was stronger. While the men were thralls under their weapons, Evelyn was an extension to hers. They worked in tandem, and as she blew smoke onto fireflies so too did her revolver blow onto enemies.
Boyd waited impatiently for the men to finish their spiel before shutting the door. They turned to leave and Boyd watched them through a window. The rain had stopped; they shambled into the settling fog, climbed onto their horses and galloped off along the long path leading away from their prairie house. The head ghoul had offered his name but they were like nothings falling from his mouth. Bast sighed. Boyd continued to stare. Still he saw the embers dancing in the dim glow of the porchlight.
Boyd clutches the bounty poster and stands up. The toads continue to croak; it is a song that makes Boyd’s heart ache; the rawness still stings. He beats a fist to his chest three times, and hopes to knock it into a stupor. Despite this the worming continues.
He steps close to the water. A formation of rock lies just across the creek, a little behind the path Evelyn followed all those years ago. There are enough crags for him to fit something in between them, something thin. Boyd slips the poster into his breast pocket and braces himself for the journey across the creek’s water. It still flows gently; the water and the rock in the fog have a singular quality – like if nature were a corpse. He takes a first step and feels the cold of the creek soak his skin up to a little above his ankle. The winter has turned the water frigid; Boyd feels like his soul is being dragged out through the soles of his feet, and as he picks up his pace the water sloshes violently, gurgles like the spittle of a demon. He emerges on the other side and shakes his legs for minutes. His ankles are numb from the cold. Boyd removes the poster from his pocket and walks toward the rock; it is jagged and reaches out in a number of directions though the ends and the edges always manage to point toward the sky. It is the type of rock to be carved out and made into a throne. Boyd wanders closer to it but stops short of crossing the dirt path that runs horizontally to the creek and separates him from the stone. He has never been on this side before. The soil of the path is hard and greyish-brown; it has a dullness of color characteristic of things touched by winter. Deep in the dirt Boyd thinks that he can make out the old hoof prints his aunt had made when she crossed years ago. He jabs a finger into an imprint and leaves it there, tries to feel the weight of the horse, the gravity of his aunt. Evelyn mingled with fireflies; all Boyd has is fog and the winter chill. Boyd sighs and rises, steps over the path and to the throne rock. Between two pincer-like edges he nestles the paper, it faces outward toward the other side of the creek. Calisto’s face is cruel against the rock. Boyd resists the temptation to check her eyes before heading back across the creek; he returns to his own rock and sifts through his satchel to find Evelyn’s gun.
The barrel is stark black in the vague light. There are gold accents along the grip of the gun, and engravings on the chamber; strange symbols like runes. Boyd thinks that they are Indian; Crowley had told him that his mother had stories, that Evelyn had cause to do dealings with a community of savages in her youth. She took something of them with her. Crowley was the one who had given him the gun; he took convincing, and refused a number of times, but one morning Boyd stepped out on the porch to find Evelyn’s gun delivered in a box inside a cloth sack, and a bandolier with it. Crowley himself had been able to do little with the gun other than clean it. There are nicks all around the chamber and about the barrel, but Boyd enjoys the weathered look – it has heft, and he feels something of his aunt in the gun when he turns it in the fog light. He needs to fire the gun now. The revolver is heavy, it weighs his arm down so that he has to hold it with both hands as he prepares to load it. He removes six bullets from the bandolier, and loads each one individually into the chamber. He spins it and it whirs. To begin with, he holds it from the hip, as in a draw. The gun is a strain on his wrist but the more he holds it steady the lighter the gun feels. He breathes lightly, tries to get to the place his aunt was, all the time, beneath the moonlight, in the fireflies…
Boyd pulls back the hammer, aims down the front sights, and fires.
Evelyn had died at night, on the doorstep, when the rain was pouring down hard.
She made visits to Boyd and Bast regularly, oftentimes to drop off a portion of the reward she received from bounties. Selling meat and milk off of the farm paid decently, but the help was always welcome, and Evelyn was not the type to be refused. She had no husband but she did have Crowley, and whenever she would go on long expeditions into the frontier she would leave him with Bast and Boyd to stay. She had come to pick him up one rainy winter night, and was smoking as usual. Boyd heard the slam of a fist against the front door and ran to open it. He only just turned twelve, and did not know to be wary of visitors on rainy nights. He threw open the door and Evelyn stood there, immense, smoking and smiling only so slightly. Her coat caught the smoke of the cigar, and Boyd imagined that if he fell on it the fabric would explode into a puff of grey. Looking into her eyes, Boyd could see that she was glad to be back; she expected nothing, just the warmth of home. A reprieve from her travels. The scars that danced on her face were soft in the porchlight. Her gun was relieved; it mimicked the ease Boyd read in Evelyn’s face. She moved to step over the threshold and a bullet erupted her breast.
Evelyn fell to her knees and hugged the doorframe. Over her shoulder Boyd could see the silhouette of a woman standing in the mud at the bottom of the porch stairs. She held a rifle, and the barrel of the gun still glowed a brilliant red in the dark and the rain. She hollered indecipherably and threw the gun to the ground, fell to her knees. The woman buried her hands into dark shadowy sockets and Boyd thought that if it were not thundering that he would hear the sobs, hear the echo of whatever story it was that brought her to his, and his sister’s, and his cousin’s doorstep, what brought her so far to kill their aunt, Crowley’s mother, and without so much as an audible word. Evelyn died crumpled in the doorway, and Boyd had some of the blood of her breast mixed into his hair. He didn’t cry, but did reach for the holster on his aunt’s hip. He did remove the revolver, he walked through the porchlight and down the stairs. He met the woman in the storm and the mud. She did not look at him. In the dark Boyd and the gun were the same black finish. He pulled the hammer back, aimed down the front sights, and fired. The bullet breached her right eye with a spit of flame, followed by a long trail of smoke from the barrel. Grey onto the fireflies.
Boyd remembers everything as the bullet propels from the revolver and whizzes past Calisto’s drawn face. It chips the rock and dust scatters into the fog. He slaps the hammer back and fires again, this time a bullet sinks into the eye of Calisto. He sees it bleed like he had earlier, when he had slashed her eyes with a finger. He does not shiver. Boyd fires again and grazes the right cheek. Once more and he hits the space above her left eyebrow. The next time her chin. Finally, her right eye. He keeps the gun drawn as he treks across the creek to retrieve the poster; it is like a feather in his hand. The creek is almost still, and the water does not broil at his ankle. Delicately he folds the paper twice-over and tucks it into his back pocket. Returning to his side of the creek, he removes a gun belt from his satchel and holsters Evelyn’s pistol at his hip. The rest goes into the saddle bags. Boyd mounts his horse and clicks his tongue to get her moving. Looking back, he thinks he sees the frail figure of his sister approaching the creek. Boyd disperses into the fog.
A heavy mist covers the ground of the creek; the rocks beneath it are only barely visible, and Boyd fights the compulsion to step on tiptoe as he dismounts his horse. He removes from his saddle bags a small, tight sack that is strung like a satchel. Loosening the string, he looks inside; he has several biscuits, wrapped in cloth so that they look like fuzzy white cubes stacked one over the other. Beside the food is the dark handle of a gun, a revolver, its barrel not visible but pointing through to the bottom of the bag, where two jars, one of milk and one strawberry, rest. Something clots in Boyd’s throat at the sight of the gun handle. He coughs and swallows it. He reaches a hand into the bag and removes a biscuit from the top of the pile, unwraps it and chews it complacently as he walks along the creek.
The winter air snaps at Boyd; he smoothens the long sleeves of his black cotton coat, tangles some fingers in his beard, hoping to coax the cold out. Boyd had spent the past few weeks growing it out, and had stood in front of his sister’s mirror for hours combing it, trying to strike the perfect balance of rugged and dangerous without coming off as unwashed and homeless. Every morning Boyd came down to breakfast, Bast had something disparaging to say. “Look like you pulled your head out of a buffalo’s buttocks,” she said, “look like you been raised by a pack of grizzlies.” Boyd didn’t tell her his reasons for growing the beard, and he kept it that way until a few mornings ago, after which she fought with him day-in-and-out, until today.
Several colossal rocks rest on Boyd’s side of the creek; he props his bag against one as he continues to eat and walks nearer to the waters. The sound of the water running beneath the fog is like the rattling of loose teeth in a mouth. The heads of blades of grass rise above the fog; Boyd steps carefully so as not to disturb the croaking of toads who sit low in the moss and the rock. They are his friends; Boyd recalls how they had talked to him at night, as a boy, when the timber halls of his home were suffocating and he needed space away from his sister. He had come to this place and did not watch the stars, though the conditions of the creek were perfect for stargazing. No, Boyd came to stare at the shore of the opposite side of the creek.
On summer nights Boyd watched his Aunt, Evelyn, travel along the creek. She was a bounty hunter, and favored the creek path on her visits into town. She was always on horseback, and often had a man or woman hogtied and hoisted over its rear. They cursed and groaned louder than the toads croaked. Evelyn’s hip holstered a revolver, long and black; its golden accents glimmered in the moonlight. Her hat was low over her eyes and from her mouth hung the smoldering shaft of a cigar. She rode past the creek in the midst of fireflies; she huffed, and blew grey onto their wings.
Boyd finishes his biscuit and lets the cloth fall onto the toads. They crowd at his feet. He steps lightly over the mist and heads back to his solitary rock, slumps and sits cross-legged next to his bag. The creek this morning is like a graveyard; trees stand at the fringes of the creek like sentinels, tall and dead in the face. Boyd had expected, while riding the cold path to the creek from his home, to find his visit rejuvenating. He needed the respite, as he had left his house on the prairie daunted, bruised and heavy. At the breakfast table, his sister, Bast, had torn into him. She was waiting at the head of the breakfast table when Boyd walked into the dining room, satchel slung across his back. Her face was pallid over a plate of grits. She did not look at him as he gently opened cupboards, but when he pulled a jar of strawberry jam down from a shelf, she slammed a foot against the floorboard and stammered, in her soft but biting way, “Goddamnit, Boyd.”
“What?” Boyd muttered, lowering the jam into the satchel’s mouth.
“Don’t ‘what’. You know well ‘what’ I mean.”
“You had your say last night, and the night before that. Don’t need no more outbursts.”
“Goddamn it!” Bast slammed her fist onto the table and her plate jumped, making a small rattle like shaken bones.
Boyd turned to look at her. “No. don’t say no more.” Bast was dour in her seat, a ghost, her apparition a mixture of shadows Boyd recognized as his sister; her cheeks were sullen, shaded red with a fever she had since she turned twenty. Bast always appeared sickly, but she had a look of half-way death. Her features fell part-ways into the grave; a deep purple scarf threatened her throat and a midnight black blouse engulfed her chest.
Bast dipped a finger into her grits and flicked it, steaming, in Boyd’s direction. “Stay home,” she said, monotone.
Boyd slid a jar of milk into his satchel. “Won’t have a home, you don’t let me go.”
Bast groaned.
“What you want me to say, Bast? We need the money.”
At “money,” Bast looked up from her plate and into Boyd’s chest. “You know damned well this ain’t about money.”
“We need the money.”
“Quit saying that.”
“Those men ain’t gonna let us off – they’ll be back – you know what folks their kind do, outlaws? They murder livestock, they torch crops, they set whole goddamned houses on fire and make folk, folk like us, to cook with them.”
“They ain’t a problem.” Bast said, and forked a mouthful of grits.
Several months ago men had appeared at their doorstep, dirty and wearing guns, demanding payment for protection. They promised to ward against the “certain” mishaps that were wont to befall poor prairie folk like Bast and Boyd. They were holed up in the nearby town, and had convinced the people there, too, to cough up cash for insurance against disaster. The men were thieves, and extortionists, and had killed the Marshal but left the two deputies alive, as they were considered (by both the town and the killers) to be equally harmless and incompetent. The deputies performed no arrests; their office received bounty posters which they swept into the corners of jail cells. The siblings’ cousin, Crowley, Evelyn’s son and the owner of a gunshop in town, told Boyd that one morning he saw the deputies on their knees, arranging the piles of posters into careful stacks inside the cells. He asked them what the hell they were doing, and they told him that the outlaws found the state of the Marshal’s office “reprehensible,” and ordered that they have the place somewhat tidy by the evening or be shot through the kidney.
“Bast.” Boyd said, setting aside a jar of milk.
“We could leave. Don’t need to cook.”
“Now, no…” Boyd played with the string on his satchel.
“You ain’t a bounty hunter.”
In the mouth of the bag Boyd could see the cool black finish of a pistol.
“You ain’t Evelyn,” Bast said, meeting Boyd’s dusty brown eyes.
Next to the pistol was a tall roll of paper, a poster from one of the deputies’ jail cells.
“You ain’t Auntie.”
Boyd reached into the bag and pulled out the revolver. The barrel snagged on the fabric but the gravity of his gesture was not lost; Bast froze.
“That ain’t yours to have. How’d Crowley give that to you?”
Boyd let out the chamber and made it spin. The whir was soft, mechanical. His gun belt and bandolier was already packed into his horse’s saddle bags but he thought then that if he had one bullet he would load it, just to show Bast that he knew, he knew what he was doing, and he knew what he was in for.
At least, he thought so.
Boyd dozes against the rock, allows a toad to make herself comfortable on his thigh. The day passes slowly here; the fog rises from the ground to choke the sky and the sun is a bleary orb in the haze, too distant to have any bearing on the creek. It illuminates the sky only barely, and the creek’s water vaguely glimmers where it used to shine. It is unlike the nights he spent here as a boy; everything is cruel, and distant. The realization bites at Boyd and he swats the toad from his leg, likely an old friend, and it croaks and leaps its way back into the rocks and the grass.
Boyd curses under his breath; Bast had hurt him. His heart is raw. He pulls curtains over it, ties the arteries like wrists with leather straps, but it wriggles and worms for every minute since he left his sister at the porch.
He reaches into the bag to find another biscuit, but his hand brushes against the tall, rolled poster bundled next to his gun. Boyd pulls it out.
The paper is rough, and heavy. Unfolding it, it is like opening a scroll; Boyd has studied the poster for many hours over many nights, so the process isn’t new to him, but the act still has a gravity that makes him uneasy. With the poster open in his hands, Boyd begins his ritual: he gives the face illustrated on the poster a quick glance, then blinks several times before looking again, this time concentrating closely on the features of his target, a woman. He starts from the head of hair: it is set in buns. The artist has drawn stray wires of it at the fringes, as if to say that its unkemptness is a key feature. Boyd fancies it a dark brunette, as it suits her and he enjoys a brunette woman. The buns frame a severe face; the lips are stern and full. The mouth is drawn wide and is reined in by moundy cheeks, freckled and craggy like the spines of mountains. Her eyes are deep-set and half open, drawn mid-blink. Boyd draws a finger from one sketched eye to the other in a slash. He means it as an innocent gesture but he imagines that the eyes bleed, his finger like a knife. He shivers.
Looking away from the eyes, Boyd turns his attention to the block of letters above and below the drawing. At the heading one word is printed, in large, black typeface: WANTED; and just below it: ALIVE OR DEAD. Beneath the drawing of the woman is a paragraph of text that reads: REWARD. SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS. FOR THE HEAD OF CALISTO. KNOWN MURDERER AND OCCASSIONAL ARSONIST. REVILED PIMP AND EXTORTIONIST. CURRENTLY THE MISTRESS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT MIDNIGHT BORDELLO, LOCATED SOME SEVERAL LEAGUES FROM THE TOWN BOGSTON. CONSIDERABLY DANGEROUS. RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS OF THREE FEDERAL MARSHALS, TWO SHERIFFS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE DEPUTIES. IS OF SAVAGE BLOOD, THOUGHT TO BE 3/4THS CHEROKEE. REMAINDER NEGRO. SPEAKS ENGLISH FLUENTLY. THOUGHT TO BE UNHINGED. REWARD OF SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS STANDS WHETHER BROUGHT IN DEAD OR ALIVE. BOUNTY WILL BE HONORED AT ANY SHERIFF OR MARSHAL’S OFFICE IN PROXIMITY TO BOGSTON, OR AT ANY TOWN WITH A MARSHAL AND TELEGRAPH OPERATOR.
Seven hundred dollars is enough to pay the outlaws for their “protection”. It’ll be a simple job: go to the bordello, find Calisto, and bring her back. Alive, if possible, but Boyd knows that the use of force might be necessary. He quivers at the thought; Boyd is not a violent man. Acts of violence stick to him; he remembers the names of the hogs at home he’s had to raise and slaughter. Charlie, Cynthia. But something is pulling him, regardless. Boyd feels…obligation, or no, a passion for the idea of bounty hunting. There are easier ways to earn money – slower ones, for sure, but ones which do not require him to travel far from home or to spill blood. And yet, when those men had shown up at his doorstep, muddy in the rain, he had thought of Evelyn.
Bast had reached the door before he could, as Boyd had been too preoccupied finishing a steak and a glass of milk to be bothered with visitors. Boyd should have answered the door himself. Visitors at night in a storm deserved precaution; but steak and milk had a way of handicapping his good sense. Boyd heard the front door creak on its hinges as he finished his glass. His sister mumbled a greeting; she was always soft-spoken, and the rainfall and intermittent claps of thunder did her voice no favors. Boyd was within several steps of the threshold when he heard the response; the voice was like sandpaper and rock: “And greetin’s to you, miss, on this fine evening,” a man said, and Boyd made out the sound of sparse chuckling. Most of the men were crowded on the doorstep, under the porch roof. The ones that weren’t were caught in the rain, and rainwater pooled and spilled out of the hems of their hats while they fidgeted. Almost every one of them was smoking a cigarette, except for the man who addressed Bast, who was standing at the front, nearly inside of the doorway. He huffed and blew a cloud of smoke that touched Bast’s right cheek. “Darlin’,” he said, glancing briefly at Boyd, “this your husband?”
“Brother.” Bast mumbled. She stood rigid at the door. Her posture was firm, and Boyd knew she was putting on a front; she was staring into the man’s eyes but was also gripping the doorknob so hard that her knuckles were red. She could tell, too, that the men were dangerous.
“Oh.” The man said in response, bemused. “That’s quite an arrangement.”
There was more chuckling from the men under the roof.
“What you want?” Boyd said, and stepped forward a bit. The man audibly groaned. He probably hoped to get somewhere with Bast. He said nothing.
“We were just settling down to eat.”
The man blew another bout of smoke into Bast’s face before answering. “Well, boy, we’re the new marshal’s force ‘round here.”
“Marshal’s force?”
“That’s what I said.” He removed his hat and shook the rain from it, then popped it back on. “It’s a new co-op. Marshal Marston has, eh, stepped down, recently, and we’re arrived to fill his station. We were in the area and thought we would introduce ourselves. Make ourselves friendly-like.”
“Well it’s nice to have met you.” Boyd moved to shut the door, but the man cleared his throat and slightly opened a side of his coat to reveal a pistol. It looked dirty in the rain, as dirty as the men. The porchlight dimly lit the outlaws, and in the lighting the men and the gun seemed to be made of the same material. The expressions of the men and the expression of the gun were the same; it had the same tired-iron grin, the same heavy shoulders; it seemed to bemoan the rain as much as the men who were caught in it, even though it was holstered and safely under the roof. The man dragging the cigar wasn’t so much the leader as the gun was. He and the men were more like specters, ghouls under the thrall of the weapon. Thunder clapped and the ghoul in front sucked his teeth.
“Hey. We also thought now would be an opportune time to discuss fees. Y’see, our operation is expensive to run, and we think it’s more’an fair that the people pitch in a bit to cover the costs of our service. Call it a one-time tax.” The man took the cigar from his mouth and turned it in his fingers while one of the followers piped up to explain the terms of their marshal’s program; He had a missing front tooth so the middles and ends of his sentences were accentuated with light whistles. They required a $650 fee to enlist their services; the men would ward against any danger Providence sends their way, save for natural disaster. Boyd and Bast could, of course, refuse payment and go at it on their own, but the life of the farmer is so easily upturned by sudden misfortune that it would be foolish not to at least consider buying protection.
All through the speech the man in front turned the cigar in his fingers. The shaft burned and the embers in the rain were brilliant in Boyd’s eyes; they flit about in the wind, on wings. He thought of the fireflies by the creek and of Evelyn riding through, herself smoking a cigar, her horse heavy with the load of men like the ones on his porch. Evelyn’s gun had shone in the moonlight; it was her essence. She triumphed over her marks because her power was stronger. While the men were thralls under their weapons, Evelyn was an extension to hers. They worked in tandem, and as she blew smoke onto fireflies so too did her revolver blow onto enemies.
Boyd waited impatiently for the men to finish their spiel before shutting the door. They turned to leave and Boyd watched them through a window. The rain had stopped; they shambled into the settling fog, climbed onto their horses and galloped off along the long path leading away from their prairie house. The head ghoul had offered his name but they were like nothings falling from his mouth. Bast sighed. Boyd continued to stare. Still he saw the embers dancing in the dim glow of the porchlight.
Boyd clutches the bounty poster and stands up. The toads continue to croak; it is a song that makes Boyd’s heart ache; the rawness still stings. He beats a fist to his chest three times, and hopes to knock it into a stupor. Despite this the worming continues.
He steps close to the water. A formation of rock lies just across the creek, a little behind the path Evelyn followed all those years ago. There are enough crags for him to fit something in between them, something thin. Boyd slips the poster into his breast pocket and braces himself for the journey across the creek’s water. It still flows gently; the water and the rock in the fog have a singular quality – like if nature were a corpse. He takes a first step and feels the cold of the creek soak his skin up to a little above his ankle. The winter has turned the water frigid; Boyd feels like his soul is being dragged out through the soles of his feet, and as he picks up his pace the water sloshes violently, gurgles like the spittle of a demon. He emerges on the other side and shakes his legs for minutes. His ankles are numb from the cold. Boyd removes the poster from his pocket and walks toward the rock; it is jagged and reaches out in a number of directions though the ends and the edges always manage to point toward the sky. It is the type of rock to be carved out and made into a throne. Boyd wanders closer to it but stops short of crossing the dirt path that runs horizontally to the creek and separates him from the stone. He has never been on this side before. The soil of the path is hard and greyish-brown; it has a dullness of color characteristic of things touched by winter. Deep in the dirt Boyd thinks that he can make out the old hoof prints his aunt had made when she crossed years ago. He jabs a finger into an imprint and leaves it there, tries to feel the weight of the horse, the gravity of his aunt. Evelyn mingled with fireflies; all Boyd has is fog and the winter chill. Boyd sighs and rises, steps over the path and to the throne rock. Between two pincer-like edges he nestles the paper, it faces outward toward the other side of the creek. Calisto’s face is cruel against the rock. Boyd resists the temptation to check her eyes before heading back across the creek; he returns to his own rock and sifts through his satchel to find Evelyn’s gun.
The barrel is stark black in the vague light. There are gold accents along the grip of the gun, and engravings on the chamber; strange symbols like runes. Boyd thinks that they are Indian; Crowley had told him that his mother had stories, that Evelyn had cause to do dealings with a community of savages in her youth. She took something of them with her. Crowley was the one who had given him the gun; he took convincing, and refused a number of times, but one morning Boyd stepped out on the porch to find Evelyn’s gun delivered in a box inside a cloth sack, and a bandolier with it. Crowley himself had been able to do little with the gun other than clean it. There are nicks all around the chamber and about the barrel, but Boyd enjoys the weathered look – it has heft, and he feels something of his aunt in the gun when he turns it in the fog light. He needs to fire the gun now. The revolver is heavy, it weighs his arm down so that he has to hold it with both hands as he prepares to load it. He removes six bullets from the bandolier, and loads each one individually into the chamber. He spins it and it whirs. To begin with, he holds it from the hip, as in a draw. The gun is a strain on his wrist but the more he holds it steady the lighter the gun feels. He breathes lightly, tries to get to the place his aunt was, all the time, beneath the moonlight, in the fireflies…
Boyd pulls back the hammer, aims down the front sights, and fires.
Evelyn had died at night, on the doorstep, when the rain was pouring down hard.
She made visits to Boyd and Bast regularly, oftentimes to drop off a portion of the reward she received from bounties. Selling meat and milk off of the farm paid decently, but the help was always welcome, and Evelyn was not the type to be refused. She had no husband but she did have Crowley, and whenever she would go on long expeditions into the frontier she would leave him with Bast and Boyd to stay. She had come to pick him up one rainy winter night, and was smoking as usual. Boyd heard the slam of a fist against the front door and ran to open it. He only just turned twelve, and did not know to be wary of visitors on rainy nights. He threw open the door and Evelyn stood there, immense, smoking and smiling only so slightly. Her coat caught the smoke of the cigar, and Boyd imagined that if he fell on it the fabric would explode into a puff of grey. Looking into her eyes, Boyd could see that she was glad to be back; she expected nothing, just the warmth of home. A reprieve from her travels. The scars that danced on her face were soft in the porchlight. Her gun was relieved; it mimicked the ease Boyd read in Evelyn’s face. She moved to step over the threshold and a bullet erupted her breast.
Evelyn fell to her knees and hugged the doorframe. Over her shoulder Boyd could see the silhouette of a woman standing in the mud at the bottom of the porch stairs. She held a rifle, and the barrel of the gun still glowed a brilliant red in the dark and the rain. She hollered indecipherably and threw the gun to the ground, fell to her knees. The woman buried her hands into dark shadowy sockets and Boyd thought that if it were not thundering that he would hear the sobs, hear the echo of whatever story it was that brought her to his, and his sister’s, and his cousin’s doorstep, what brought her so far to kill their aunt, Crowley’s mother, and without so much as an audible word. Evelyn died crumpled in the doorway, and Boyd had some of the blood of her breast mixed into his hair. He didn’t cry, but did reach for the holster on his aunt’s hip. He did remove the revolver, he walked through the porchlight and down the stairs. He met the woman in the storm and the mud. She did not look at him. In the dark Boyd and the gun were the same black finish. He pulled the hammer back, aimed down the front sights, and fired. The bullet breached her right eye with a spit of flame, followed by a long trail of smoke from the barrel. Grey onto the fireflies.
Boyd remembers everything as the bullet propels from the revolver and whizzes past Calisto’s drawn face. It chips the rock and dust scatters into the fog. He slaps the hammer back and fires again, this time a bullet sinks into the eye of Calisto. He sees it bleed like he had earlier, when he had slashed her eyes with a finger. He does not shiver. Boyd fires again and grazes the right cheek. Once more and he hits the space above her left eyebrow. The next time her chin. Finally, her right eye. He keeps the gun drawn as he treks across the creek to retrieve the poster; it is like a feather in his hand. The creek is almost still, and the water does not broil at his ankle. Delicately he folds the paper twice-over and tucks it into his back pocket. Returning to his side of the creek, he removes a gun belt from his satchel and holsters Evelyn’s pistol at his hip. The rest goes into the saddle bags. Boyd mounts his horse and clicks his tongue to get her moving. Looking back, he thinks he sees the frail figure of his sister approaching the creek. Boyd disperses into the fog.