David Nickle - Eutopia

He hefted the box under his arm, tipped his cap to Miss Louise Butler, and followed Ruth Harper through the crowd. He was grinning like a fool, but he didn’t care and figured he couldn’t do anything about it if he did. That grin stayed with him—when they ducked through a group of workers to avoid drawing Mr. Harper’s attention; when they hurried past the horseshoe spike and down a row of blossoming apple trees, over another rise and to a quiet place beyond.

It stayed on him right up until the moment that he opened the box, and found the gleaming silver Colt six-shooter nestled there, resting up in its blood-red bed of velvet.

“No one knows,” said Ruth Harper, rocking from one foot to the other and grinning madly in the dappled sunlight of the orchard. “Not even Louise. Especially not Louise. I purchased it in Chicago—it belonged to Calamity Jane!”

Jason held the gun in two hands. It was a Colt Single Action Army revolver, and although it was nickel-plated with a fine walnut grip, it showed its age. The barrel was nicked in two places and the finish on the wood was worn where the heel of a hand would touch. Jason flicked the magazine open and sighed. At least it wasn’t loaded.

“The ammunition is in a little compartment in the box,” said Ruth.

Jason flicked it closed and held it at his side, pointed to ground. “How much did you pay?”

“Twenty-nine dollars,” said Ruth.

“That seems dear.”

“I know,” said Ruth. “But it came with the box—and a certificate.”

“Have you fired it?”

“No.”

“That’s one reason nobody knows you got one, I guess. These things make a racket.”

“Like thunderclaps,” said Ruth.

“Although it looks like you could,” said Jason, sighting along the barrel. “Gun’s old, but it’s been cared for.”

“Would you like to?”

Jason looked up. Ruth had moved off to the base of an apple tree. It was too early in the season for apples to grow, but she must have had one in her pantaloons, because she was buffing it on her shirt now. She stood straight against the tree, and put the apple on her head so that it balanced.

“The bullets are in the box. A compartment near the hinge,” she said.

Jason gawked.

“Oh come along,” said Ruth, rolling her eyes in such exasperation that the apple nearly fell. “You can deny all you like. But I see how you handle that iron.”

“Iron?”

“Gun,” she said, and took the apple from her head. “It’s quite clear to me that you are simply being obstinate.”

“Obstinate, huh?” Jason let the gun dangle at his side.

“Obstinate. As Jack Thistledown’s true-born son, you should have no difficulty shooting the apple from the top of my head,” she said, and made her finger into that pantomime of a pistol again, pointed it at the apple in her other hand, and bent her wrist like she fired it. “You’ve got shooting in your blood. It is a eugenical fact.”

Jason looked at her. He drew a breath and counted a few before talking.

“First thing,” he said, “I have not shot one of these before. I’ve seen them. And I’ve seen them shot. So the one eugenical fact is this: if I tried to shoot the apple from your head, more than likely I’d shoot the eye from your socket. Then you’d be dead and I’d be in dutch.” Jason flipped the gun around in his hand so he gripped it around the barrel and the magazine, and presented the grip to Ruth. “This is a fine enough ‘iron’ you bought yourself—though I don’t guess it came from Calamity Jane or anyone else famous. You got the certificate?”

Ruth took the gun. “In my room.” She said it sullenly. “You know, everyone is convinced that your father was Jack Thistledown.”

She whirled then, raised her arm and pointed the gun at Jason.

“Ha!” she said. “See? Your nerves are steel. You did not even flinch!”

“It’s not loaded,” said Jason.

Ruth squinted at him. “Even knowing—a lesser man would have flinched,” she said. “The son of a gunfighter? Never.”

“You know,” said Jason, “you don’t know me well enough to make those sorts of guesses.”

Ruth stood still, lowered the gun, and crooked her head to one side in a way that was becoming familiar. “Why Jason Thistledown I do believe there is a tear in your eye.”

“Something in my eye. Not crying.”

“ Ahem . Nerves of steel indeed.”

And she stepped up to him, dropped the apple to the ground and standing very close, touched his cheek with a fingertip. Her eyes held nothing but frank amazement.

“You never answered my other question,” she said.

“What question?”

She pulled back. “Whatever have you been up to since we parted ways at the dock?”

It came out fast—most of the story, and at the right point, the rest of the tears.

That point came early on, when Jason was telling about burning up his mama and the homestead and all, at the advice of Aunt Germaine. Jason did not want to tell that part, but it was the only way he could explain Bergstrom’s decision to lock him up in the quarantine the first night.

“Aunt Germaine figured that washing me down and burning up my mama would do the trick—kill the germ and make it right, and I went—” He was about to say, I went along , but he found he could not say anything else. He felt a fist close in his middle, and his mouth filled with salt, and he shut his eyes to try to will it away, but he could not. So he cried, and as he did he found he was no better at it now than he was when he wept at his mama’s deathbed.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. They were sitting at the base of a tree, cross-legged on the ground, Ruth facing him. He saw that she was tearing up too.

“Your mother died,” she said. “Do not apologize.”

“Not just my mama,” said Jason. “The town. Cracked Wheel. Everybody died.”

Ruth frowned and sniffed and swallowed. “The entire town. From this same illness?”

“A hundred folk,” said Jason.

“All,” she said, “but you—you and your aunt.”

“She wasn’t from town.”

“Yes. She was just passing through, you said.”

“Intending to visit us, she said.”

“In the middle of winter. Did she visit often in winter?”

“She never visited before this,” said Jason. “Winter or summer. It was a good thing she did, though. On balance, I mean.”

Ruth let Jason get on with the rest of his story: about how Dr. Bergstrom stuck a needle in him and put him in quarantine. Jason did not cry for this part, although it was a memory that he had been doing his best to forget since freeing Dr. Waggoner and he thought it might be a thing to make him weep. But thinking about it now just made him mad, and egged on by Ruth’s encouraging nods, he told most all of the story the way it had happened. All of it, but the fact that the creature looked like Ruth Harper in miniature. He could not figure out a way to say that.

“Your aunt gave you a scalpel,” Ruth said. “To cut yourself free.”

“Else I’d have been done for.”

“May I see your hand?”

Jason extended it. The bandage was off now, but the stitches were still in place, little black sutures running up the heel of his thumb. She took his hand, cradling it in her own palm, while she ran a fingertip along the sutures. She made a tsk-tsk sound, then set his own hand back in his lap.

“So she knew about the creatures.”

“She—” Jason had seen her talking with Dr. Bergstrom like they were old friends. But he had not yet let himself think that she actually knew all the things that were to befall him in that quarantine.