III.
Morning next. Sitting in the dark and smoke-filled office with my boots propped up on the pinewood desk, throat raw and dry from a night’s sit. Like pemmican, I suppose. Heavy lids dip low upon my tired eyes as I take another sip from the earthen triple-x jug set beside me on the floor. It’s been a long night, a real hoo-haw of a thing. My stomach muscles ache, my back hurts, my knees are scuffed, and the piles are acting up again. But worst of all are the memories.
“Lest we forget,” I prost myself as I tipple back anew. Another facet of the First Church plot, another little hump of earth to forget, more water in that vast well of souls. Lest we forget.
“Man Jesus!” Angus whoops as he swings open the office door. A blinding blade of light cuts in behind him before the door swings back to. He plants his bony ass on the desk and motions over for the jug. “That was a real hoo-haw, last night was. Hell if they send any more tax agents round these parts!” He swigs a taste and croaks, “Gods-blasted government.”
“Yeah,” I sort of sigh tiredly. Or is it wistfully? Lest we forget. “Those damned federals.”
Angus hums his approval as he idles over the jug, neither drinking nor passing with the dad-gun thing set in his lap. “Yeah, poking their noses where they dun’t belong. Upsetting the general will, you know? Greater good,” he mutters, quite definitely in wist. Tottering the bottle in his lap, neither lifting for the swig nor passing it on. Giving me the ants. I stand.
“Gotta get me some air,” I say, I fear with a trickle of the sweats and a shake. Vomitous uprisings in the bowels, bit of the spleen upacting. Lest we forget. Hitching up my belt I decide to holster the shooter I’ve left lying across the desktop.
“Specting trouble?” he drawls from beneath the great flat brim of his hat.
“Nah, just holds my pants up.” I exit into another blinding swath of sun rising overhead. Not nearly so high as to leave a shade on the porch, yet well above the spread of town to make it painful to the dank-weakened eye. “Christ’s cross.” But sun besides, there’s a mild touch of breeze about the air that seems pleasant and refreshing. Quelling the troubles below, as it were.
I saunter, but then there’s nowhere quite to go in town when a body wants to be alone. I turn toward the hills, past First Church and the mounds of earth in the yard. Mounds of flesh, sizable cups in the well. Or maybe mere thimbles. It’s beyond me to speculate at present. Looking onward, the ancient shaggy Scarsdales hump along the sky’s bottom edge, a sort of earthen corrugate cut out. Two silky plumes of smoke trickle upwards, mining camps in the hills’ midst. No doubt still reeking of the morning’s bacon and saltpork and burnt coffee and distant shit.
I walk along and off the dusty trail, hoofing it down a grassy knoll. To someplace secluded and lonesome and scrubby-green. Mayhap to laze about the junipers and sage and withered pines and ponder, or even to thoughtlessly gaze at the unending skies above. In either case, to mull alone for a spell. To lie upon Mother Earth and under our most distant relative, the Sun. Among birds and mule deer and dozy bugs, to stretch out and reflect – lest we forget. Because Ned’s world won’t forget where he’s got, and a hard rain’s bound to fall after him.
I sometimes wish I could just up and ride away with the sun, to travel on like the unending day and ceaseless night. But then, I don’t much like horses. Sarta dee, sarta dum… I find an inviting little spot overlooking the south plain and drop down in a grassy patch. Tossing aside my hat and cradling head in hands I watch the azure skies above, clear and pure as a church pane. Lazy clouds off to the east, drifting southward to Mexico, or the Gulf. Hard to say for sure.
Peaceful repose, badly needed serenity. Lest we – and with a mighty mid-morning yawn – string ourselves up ado over nothing. I close my eyes and it feels good, real good. I can feel the breeze picking up, gusting the soft and pleasant scents of fresh sage to my nostrils. Warm sun on my face, rather quickly I find myself drifting off…
* * is this the end? find out in our next installment * *
