Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

“You will,” said Sugar.

Neither man flinched. The mouth of Sugar’s pistol barrel was cooling against the head of the child. The sheriff was aiming at the left side of Sugar’s chest. It was unprotected by the girl’s body, and it was possible he could puncture a lung or even strike the man in the heart if he was steady enough. He pulled the hammer back and ordered Sugar to release the girl.

Sugar did not oblige and so the sheriff exhaled, steadied his hand, shut one eye to aim at Sugar’s chest, and fired.

Alice collapsed against Sugar, who stumbled back but did not fall. At first she did not bleed and then she bled profusely from the forehead. The sheriff flinched and Sugar took only a brief look at the girl before firing his counter. The sheriff took two bullets before collapsing to one knee. He raised his pistol and fired again but hit no mark. Sugar, still clutching the limp body of the girl, stepped toward the sheriff and fired again and again as he did so. Bullets ripped at the man who slumped forward onto his bent and planted leg, before tipping over into the dirt. The doctor sprung from the bar then, swinging his club and aiming in a sort of general way at Sugar. Sugar turned and fired on the doctor, but his pistol only impotently clicked at the man who did not slow in his advance. Sugar pulled a third pistol from his belt and fired on the doctor, this time breaking a piece from the club and finally giving the man pause. He was not fully stopped, but he slowed to cast a glance at the mangled club, and this allowed Sugar to plant two more bullets in the bulk of him. The doctor stumbled but did not fall. The club slipped from his hand and bounced against the road twice, tapping once its top end and once its handle, before settling.

The doctor said, “Stop,” and Sugar fired on him again, ending his protest.

There were no men on the rooftops. The town had no response for what had just happened. Things were as still around Sugar as they had ever been. Only, the alleyways were a little safer now. The boxes he would pass, as he went from store to store and house to house, gathering supplies and ending any objections: these were safer too.

Doubling back gained Brooke nothing but a little more time. He soon found the water again, and with it, a few small things to eat. Insects and algae, minnows and tadpoles. He caught a lizard but there was not much meat to it.

There had also been a man in the woods, but Sugar had not known about that. Brooke came upon the man while he was sleeping. Brooke was wandering the woods and discovered a clearing of grass being fed upon by a herd of longhorns. These were burly creatures. He had heard about them and seen their likeness, but had never seen one up close. They were formidable. Their horns were more than long. They were monstrous. The average creature’s performed a single curl before branching out away from its face. They split and thinned toward the end as if they were entirely for show, rather than weaponry. They shuttered at his approach but did not resist his hand. He touched one after the other, examining their crunchy fur with his fingertips and saying hello to one after the other. There was a small campfire on the opposite side of the herd and a man on his back with his hat over his face. He must have been sleeping because he did not startle at the sound of Brooke’s approach. A man like that was too fit for casual robbery to be ignored. Brooke and Sugar had been in the woods too long for any pretensions toward some code against the act. Codes of conduct were relevant only in the absence of need. Brooke set to the man’s nearby bag in search of something that might improve their situation. He found nothing but did wake the man who unsettled his hat and revealed himself to share a likeness with the man who had driven the horse that vanished Brooke’s wife.

“It’s you,” said Brooke.

“I do not know you,” said the man.

“This is a faith-inducing level of coincidence,” said Brooke.

“We do not know each other,” said the man. “I do not know who you think I might be.”

Brooke was on the man’s throat before he could say much more. The man died quickly and it was no grand affair, but as Brooke sat to his side, reexamining the bag — a little more thoroughly this time — it occurred to him that he did not, in fact, view his wife’s true husband as a mortal enemy. He was not really an enemy at all. If anything, Brooke had stolen from the man and the man had only reclaimed what belonged to him. And Brooke had never really gotten along with his wife anyway, so he was no worse for the loss, when he thought it all the way through. The truth was, there was a hostility and a violence in him that was based on no external source. This was not a man Brooke had wanted to kill. Brooke had merely wanted to kill, and there was a man. The herd was too fascinating and dumb to suit the purpose. If the man was who Brooke suspected him to be, there was something meaningful behind the murder, even if there was no real good in it.

He was thinking about it too much. Spending too much time there with the body and the bulls. They had not reacted at all to the killing. The grass was soft and long beneath him. There was a subtle wind around them. This area did not frost, though it was late in the winter months. He and Sugar had taken the route through this part of the plains, feeling that, though a great deal longer, their travels would be more comfortable and they would have a greater chance of staying healthy and fit for when they came out the other end. Brooke found a small kerchief at the bottom of the man’s bag. Inside the kerchief was a bundle of small bones held together with a bit of wire. There was absolutely no way of knowing where it had come from or why, but Brooke assumed it was some attempt made by the man to keep his leavings to a minimum. Perhaps these bulls had nothing to do with him and he was on the run. Pursued by men or dogs or men with dogs, and any bit of scent left behind or too boldly displayed would be his undoing. Or maybe he had been traveling with the bulls to best obscure his trail. Or maybe it was an icon of some kind, a bit of religion the man carried with him. Brooke had no religion but knew enough to know that icons were a part of most Sunday gatherings. These manifested in very individual ways in people’s private lives and he was no one to judge what a man might carry with him and what it might mean to him. There was a bit of cheese and moldy bread in the bag too, which Brooke pocketed. There were no weapons and nothing more of any use, so Brooke abandoned the bag and the bones and the body and said goodbye to each of the bulls, one after the other.

He loved his brother and they shared nearly everything, but something in him did not want to go into an attempt at explaining what had happened out there in the clearing that morning, so he kept the cheese and bread for himself and left the whole thing unmentioned. That was the one death he carried privately. The one death it was entirely possible no one ever knew he was responsible for, other than himself and the bulls. Whatever happened to the bulls was impossible to say. It was possible whoever had been after the man eventually did catch up with him. They would have been disappointed, seeing their work completed for them, but maybe there would be some condolence in the bulls that were left at their discretion. If he had been the man Brooke suspected, and the news ever made it back to his ex-wife, there was even the chance she would guess it was him who had done the killing. Judging by the man’s appearance, he had been out with the herd for some time. Or out in the wilderness for some time. Brooke had not been able to determine the man’s route, or had not taken the time to, and it was as possible that he was headed home as it was that he was headed out for good. Either way, if she heard anything she would likely hear that the man had been strangled. And, being a sharp lady and somewhat suspicious, she would likely assume it was Brooke. Which made him happy enough.