Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

Moths broke the sunlight coming through the cracks overhead. Or bats. He could not tell because his eyes were focusing and unfocusing as he moved through the large beams of light striping the barn’s interior. He listened for any squeaks or squeals but heard only the sounds of the horses stepping in the grass and breathing and those of Mary making her way back around the barn with the water.

“I like it here,” said Bird.

“It is a nice place,” said Mary.

It was a bright night, and everything was more blue and white than black, but still Brooke could not make out the trail they might have been taking, or any prints to indicate a proper route. If he’d learned the stars, he could have at least followed them in some vaguely correct direction. But he had not learned the stars. He had not even tried. He might have tried more, he thought. He might have retained a few things here and there, instead of always just doing what he was good at and never learning anything. He cursed himself for being good at things that got you by. He turned back from his wide wandering and decided to follow the water instead. He might have been lost, but at least he would live.

In every direction, it was rock and desert. Small plants cropped up like lint on the horizon, but there was nothing substantial, other than stone and vastness, nothing that would lead him to believe food would be coming his way any time soon. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he would be. For Brooke, it came on strong, and like a seizure, it gripped him and would not let go.

It was funny to him, to die in this way. Alone and for no good reason. Nearly every man he’d killed, he’d killed for a reason, however simple the reason was. And now he would die from bad luck and the world’s indifference. It was funny to him, on some level.

He began to list in his head the men and women he had killed in his life. One of them or some of them had come back on him and that had brought him here. It had likely not happened as intended, but the end result would be the same.

There was Jenny’s man. The runner. Whatever it was he’d done, Jenny wanted him gone, and she was a high payer and even a sort of friend. And now Jenny was gone and her bar was gone and there was nothing left of the sizable deal they’d made. Taking the man down had not been a particular challenge. They’d found him sleeping beside the very fire he had used to cook his last meal. They positioned his face in the coals and held it there until he ceased to struggle. They had not robbed him because they did not rob when they did not have to. People are sentimental and objects have personal value beyond the knowledge of thieves. They were to be paid and would have had everything they needed, so they left the man’s objects to those who would find him. They took his food but that would have been of no use to anyone but themselves after a day or so. It was an easy job, but one that had gone uncelebrated and, as far as Brooke knew, unrumored or spread. It was likely not an associate of Jenny’s man that was after them.

Before that there was a constable of some sort. Brooke could not remember the full details of the man’s position. He had been on the payroll of a criminal who was doing fine more or less running a small town by a large lake, until he hassled the wrong farmer and got a couple of killers after him. At one point, Brooke and Sugar had been in high demand wherever they’d gone. People needed support, protection. They’d like a gun in their hand, but even more they’d like a gun in someone else’s hand, a hand they could control. Brooke understood it. He appreciated it. Decent people had others to look after and could not go hunting folks down for revenge or justice themselves. He and Sugar were not technically decent people. They had one another, but it was because they were brothers and they cared for one another, not out of any kind of necessity or civility.

It was true, the constable of some sort had put up a fight. He even tried to hole up in his home with a set of antique rifles. Brooke and Sugar had finally had to smoke him out, filling his windows with explosive cocktails and setting themselves up to fire on anyone who came tumbling out. They expected him to come from the front door or a window, but the man had held his position. There was very little recognizable left of him in the ashes.

Brooke did not like killing men of high standing because it made people restless. It made them worry that they were not safe, and Brooke and Sugar were far better off with everyone feeling like they were safe. Safe as possible. They’d left that town and never come back. It was entirely possible that the constable’s men were those that were after him and his brother. They’d had an official air to them, Brooke’s captors. They were self-righteous and clean.

There was little use in this kind of speculation, but he needed something to keep his mind and feet moving as he progressed toward wherever it was that he was going.

Another possibility was the little man who’d razed Jenny’s. They hadn’t killed anyone that Brooke could remember, but they’d beaten his men and there was reason to be sore about the exchange. The hope had been to leave town and be done with all of it. There was plenty of territory to roam and no reason to ever go back to any particular spot if there wasn’t something favorable awaiting them. They weren’t about to get in any established person’s way over something that was much larger than either him or Sugar.

The stream broke against a large red rock and split in two. Brooke had heard that a lot of the stars in the sky were more or less the same every night, and you could use them as a tool. It did not look that way to him. It looked like a pan full of sand that shook and shook each night after it set.

His mind was wandering. He could not focus. It meant he was tired, but he could not bring himself to stop moving yet. He needed some final something to secure himself in his plan, or to draft a new one. He did not like to wait or give in before a challenge. It was cold out there. He was shivering and wet and getting colder. He did not like the desert.

After several hundred more feet, he fell. He loosed a reasonable amount of wood from his supply and began to pile it into a cone. He could not go on in the cold, tired as he was. There was no shame in collapsing. There was only shame in letting fear or uncertainty give you pause. There was a flint in each of his heels and he removed his boots to get the fire going then slid them back on for additional warmth. They were not safe shoes, but that was part of the pleasure of them. And more than once they’d brought him comfort and a sense of home when there would otherwise have been none. He did not like to wear them down, but emergencies did happen. He warmed his hands and cheeks when the flames finally kicked up. He listened to the fire snapping and the water singing against the rocks behind him. He did not much mind being alone. He wondered if he would be alone forever, or if he would meet Sugar again and then he wondered if they would get over whatever it was that had come between them, and settle into one another once again.

In the mornings, Martha played her piano. Whether or not it was to wake them or to greet them as they woke, it was unclear. Bird’s strength was coming back. He thought less and less about the arm, and more and more about eating, sweating, and helping. He kept active. He was normally up before Martha began. He would hear her heels break the silence, then the shift of the key cover and her settling in. He did not know the songs she played, but he often heard John humming them throughout the day. Bird did not want to draw attention to himself by being the first one up, so he listened for John or Mary before making his presence known. It wasn’t a worry of his exactly, but something physical. He simply could not lift the blankets until the house was at least half awake.