Bullet Three

Mother sat on the edge of the bed in the main bedroom of the ranch house and looked over the pages of the play that father had been writing.  It wasn’t the one that he intended to write, the one about his coming to South Dakota.  That one he never got to.  He was taken away by Dakota Inc. before he had a chance to start it.  The one that mother was looking at was one that he had written during the War.  He had written it to keep his mind on the things of Richmond, and to take it off of the killing that was going on north and south of the great city, in fields and over hills which, at the time, were far enough away to not be real, but close enough not to be a just dream.

Mother remembered how he used to sit in his chair near the window and sip his warm water, the half-finished pages of his play turning uselessly in his hand, his face turned to the window.  He would just stare for hours at the street beyond the glass where all the people walking—people he knew even from his youth—turned to strangers before his eyes.  He looked so sad, mother thought, as tears formed in her eyes.  How do you get over sadness like that?  Do you move to South Dakota?  Does that help?

Perhaps, she thought.

Perhaps it is the only way, in the end.

She looked down at the foot of the bed.  There were father’s boots, still neatly placed together.  Empty.

She turned again to the pages in her hand.  The last few were blank.  There was no ending to the play.  There was no ending because there was simply no ending.  The War  took care of that. The new play was to have started in South Dakota, but South Dakota was endless as well, mother thought.  Endless, all the way even to the ocean.  For it is all South Dakota, she thought, and then you fall into the water and are buried, and so even the oceans might as well be South Dakota.  Yes, there was truly no end in sight.

Without an ending, all of the pages might as well have been blank.  They might as well not have been written at all.  Mother remembered the pages of the newspapers, and the pages from the books that blew down the streets when the blue soldiers came, popping with sparks and ash, burning all of their pages blank.  She took father’s play and went over to the fireplace where Lucy was resting beneath the colored quilt and threw it in.

Then she went to the chair near the window and stared out at the plains beyond.  Lucy began to cough and shudder, but mother just stared and stared.  Soon, her eyes became blank.

Father was gone, and Jason could no longer work.  Dakota Inc. had forbidden it, and so he no longer went to the casino to work for Van Carlo. He spent his time hanging out near the ranch house, usually out back, brushing their one horse that pulled their small wagon, and speaking to her in quiet, gentle tones.

Mother was afraid that soon they would also come for Jason.  The boy was still strong, and useful, and if there was any chance of them getting paid, it would be through him.  And so the boy would be worth quite a lot to Dakota Inc.

‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘surely they will come for the boy soon.’

They would come with their remorseless faces and all their guns, and there would be bullets, bullets, everywhere.  Bullets in the bread and bullets in the soup and in the feed for the horse and bullets everywhere that would go down the throat the hard way.  So the best thing for the boy would be to stay out of sight; to never go out, and never, ever go into Shadow, and hope that enough time might pass that Dakota Inc. would forget about him.

‘But I can still work,’ mother thought.  There was a room in the ranch house with a hole in the ceiling where the boy never slept anymore. The boy only slept outside, on his back each night, his hands behind his head and staring up at the moon; and Lucy stayed under the colored quilt and could not move anymore because of the coughing which clung to her like a thin, damp nightgown.

Mother remembered a watch she had in a drawer in the bedroom.  It was broken and no longer told time, but it was made of gold and still worth something.  She stood up from the window and went to get the watch.  She’d use the watch to buy something so that she could work in the only way a woman like her could in Shadow.  The fair-skinned women in town said that the smoke made it easier, but the smoke cost money, and that was the reason she needed the watch.

Whiskey was available, too, and easier to get, and she wondered for a brief moment if she should try whiskey instead of the smoke.  But the problem was that she never really had a taste for whiskey.  Well, she actually did a little, before the war.  But during the war, they would give it to the soldiers when they had been shot through the arm or leg, just before they began to saw at the torn and ragged limbs, so now whiskey tasted like amputation to mother. No, she couldn’t even bring herself to smell whiskey anymore, let alone drink any, so it would have to be the smoke for her.

The fair skinned women told mother that the smoke would go into her mind and make her think about some strange things, but she doubted that they could be any stranger than the thoughts that were already in there.  She would join the fair skinned women in their work, otherwise mother knew there would be no surviving South Dakota, especially its winter.  And even with the work, it would be hard season for them to bear.

Mother went into town to see the fair-skinned women, and bought some smoke with her gold watch.  Then, each evening, just after the sun began to set, she left her children at home and climbed into the wagon with its one tired horse and rode to Shadow.  In the wagon on the way to town, mother would use the smoke, and then go and find a man to pleasure.  It didn’t matter who the man was as long as he was with Dakota Inc. Dakota Inc. organized the fair-skinned women, and Dakota Inc. men were the only men the women took into their rooms and their wagons and their tents.

So, for a few long and painful weeks–hazy, and void of form or reason–mother did this, but at the end of it there was still no money for the family to live on.  Because of her husband’s debt, Dakota Inc. took a percentage of what mother earned.  It was a very large percentage; practically all of it.  What was left over went for the smoke, and mother found herself beginning to use it more and more, until the boy noticed that the smell of it became like the smell of mother herself.  It was all around her, and announced her presence before she was even seen.  It came before her like an emissary, and it followed after her like the long train of a filthy wedding dress.

Every morning mother would sleep in late.  The boy would bring her some hot water and some bread for breakfast, but she would never take it.  It would sit on the bedside table as mother just lay there. Eventually, the man in the bed with her—there was always a man—would nod and smile at the boy and then reach over and take the bread and eat it himself.

“Much obliged,” he’d say.

They were different men from Dakota Inc. most of the time.  Mother did not really have any regulars, and though the boy knew that the men were always different, to him they all looked the same.  The same man, just dozens of them, all with different names.

After bringing bread and water to mother, the boy would bring some to Lucy, who was always laying by the fire under the colored quilt.  But she would never eat, either.

“Give it to the birds, Jason,” she’d say.

            “What birds, Lucy?”  It’s winter now, and I haven’t seen many.”

            “Ah,” Lucy said softly, her eyes closed, as they were most of the time.  “So they have not followed us from Richmond.  I see…they have kept going to the ocean, while we stopped here.”

            The boy told her that he didn’t understand.  Then Lucy told him it was angels; that she meant the angels.  Then she smiled and said that she was sleeping a lot these days and to never mind her.

            “It seems that I am the fool now, Jason,” she said, smiling. “Not you so much.”

***

            The next day the boy went to bring the bread and hot water to mother, but she was not in her room, and neither was the man from Dakota Inc.  He walked out of the bedroom and laid the bread and water near Lucy’s head, near the fire.

            “Lucy, I can’t find mother.  She’s not here, and the bed is made.  I don’t think she ever returned from last night,” he said.

            His sister responded, but he couldn’t tell what she said.  She was speaking in whispers a lot these days because her throat hurt from coughing so much, and she was so tired.  Also, her breathing was very raspy, like waves upon rocks.

            There was a small cup of water with a little sugar in it next to her head that the boy brought to her each night to soothe her cough.  The boy looked into the cup and noticed that the water was gone, but there was a small amount of blood at the bottom of the cup instead.

            His sister barely made a wrinkle underneath the colored quilt.  She was so thin; thinner than a ghost.  Maybe she was already a ghost, the boy thought.  She was the transparent pale of a ghost, and she certainly spoke like he imagined a ghost would speak.

            From the fire place some embers popped out and landed on the quilt.  They were not dangerous.  Just cold embers, and they quickly extinguished upon the thick quilt covering Lucy. One of them landed on a strand of Lucy’s hair, and it began to burn along it slowly until the boy reached down and squeezed it out with his fingers.

            He picked Lucy up and moved her back a little from the fire. She turned her head up to him slowly, but did not open her eyes.

            “Do not move me, brother,” she said in a whisper.  “I like the flickering light of the fire in front of my closed eyes.  It makes me think of Richmond during the war, and the popping of embers reminds me of the sounds of the muskets in the distance.  I remember when I would stand at the window with closed eyes, for I could not bear to look at all the burning.  And I thought that if I closed my eyes, I could see something beautiful instead.”

            The boy started to say something, but stopped.  He sighed sadly and moved her back nearer the fire.  Then he sat down next to her, and stroked her hair gently.

            “Lucy, I’m worried.  I am worried about mother.”

            After a long pause, Lucy responded.

            “I am in the kitchen with the muffins, Jason.  Mother is here.  The muffins have red frosting, and they are glorious. All the soldiers have returned and are smiling, and even their horses are smiling.”

            The boy looked confused.

            “Lucy, the kitchen is empty” he said.  “There is only a little bread and water next to you here.  There are no soldiers.  There haven’t been any soldiers for a long time. Except…” he paused.  “From what I hear, the blue soldiers are coming closer this way in South Dakota.  I do not want them here, to be honest.  But they will be here soon enough anyway, and it will be like Richmond again, and you won’t need the fire before your closed eyes to imagine it.”

            After a moment, the boy said, “Wherever we go, it seems the guns always follow,” He sighed again.

“We need to get out of here, Lucy.  Perhaps West, to the mountains.  I don’t know.  But mother has not returned from last night.  I hope she comes soon.”

            “No, Jason,” Lucy said.  “The soldiers have come home, for they came in the night, one by one.  All are tall and grand, and their uniforms are as clean as the day they marched from Richmond.  There is no speck of blood on them, and the only red is the frosting of the muffins, which mother has baked.”

            At that moment, the boy became angry.  His sister’s imagination had become greater since her voice became weaker.  She was spending too much time in front of the fire, just as she spent too much time in front of the window during the War of the States. He was angry at her and angry at himself for being such a fool.  He could not understand his sister, or her imagination, and he hated himself for it.

            He stood up in a flash and ran to the chair near the window.  There was a holster with a long barreled pistol hanging from it.  The pistol was from the blue soldier that he’d killed with his knife during the war.  He grabbed the gun with its six-chambered heart and turned it on his sister.  Perhaps this would open her eyes.  Perhaps this would turn her away from the flashing before her eyes, he thought.

            “Open your eyes, Lucy!” he screamed.  “And help look for mother!”  Then he raised the barrel up so that it pointed just above Lucy’s head and fired it into the wall. Each time he fired, he punctuated it with these words:

            “There is a soldier!  There is Richmond!  There is a soldier!”  And he fired until the gun was empty.

            “There is a soldier!  There is mother!  There is father!  And the muffins are hard and will smash your teeth to pieces when you eat them!  Now where is mother?!  She has not returned from last night!”

            Lucy shrieked in fright and covered her head with the quilt. Her body shook with violent tremors, and the quilt writhed over her as though wild horses were trampling upon it.

            “No, Jason!” she screamed.  “I have not seen her because my eyes are not open!  Ask the man! Ask father!  There is always a man in the house, and he must still be here!  There is always a man in the house!” And she sobbed heavily and continued to shake uncontrollably.

            The boy threw the smoking gun to the floor roughly.

            “No!” he said, grabbing Lucy. “The men mother brings are not father!  And this is not Richmond!  But I can make it feel like Richmond, by heavens, if you do not open your eyes!”  He wheeled and picked up the gun.  Then he pressed the warm barrel against Lucy’s forehead where it left a circular mark.  “Do you feel this?  This is the clean soldier!  This is mother and father!  Now help me!”

            Lucy put her hands over her ears and shook her head wildly.  And with all the strength she had left, she replied as plainly as she could.

            “I don’t know, Jason!” she cried.  “She is off with a stranger!  How can I know her place when all the men are strangers?!”

            The boy let go of her, and she collapsed, sobbing, to the floor, her limbs tangled awkwardly around and through the colored quilt.

            “She is gone, Jason.  Just gone.  She is not herself, and the man is a stranger and no one, and so we must make them something…something we can recognize. And it is up to us to do this because father is no longer here to help us.  And so I don’t care what you think or what you say, Jason!  I will see the very clean soldiers, and I will see the muffins and they will be sweet, because what else can they be?  What else?  There is nothing else!”

            The boy recoiled at his sister’s harsh reply.  He sat back, almost as if pushed, onto the hard, wooden floor of the ranch house.  The heavy gun in his hand made a dull thud as it plopped to the floor, his limp hand still holding the grip.

            “And you, Jason, are a hypocrite,” his sister continued, her voice muffled as she buried her sunken face deep into the colored quilt.  “You…with a mind like a mirror pointed to the gray skies of South Dakota.  A knife?  You used a knife, and you think that makes you better than that blue soldier you killed.  And now you have his gun and you point it at your sister. You would just as well have left him alive and not taken it.”

            After that she said nothing, and neither did the boy.  There was no sound in the house except for the wind blowing through the holes in the wall, and the sound of his sister’s breathing, which was now like shallow creek water over very small stones.

            After a minute had passed, Lucy spoke again. “Jason?  Jason?” Her voice was a whisper.

            “I’m here, Lucy.”  And when the words came out, the boy was surprised to hear that his own voice sounded almost as weak as hers did.  He felt numb all over.

            “I forgive you, brother.  You are just an empty sack.  Just a fool, and a dullard, with an imagination like a crack in the desert.  But I will fill you, Jason.  With pure, white flower of high quality, and I will make the muffins, and they will be sweet, with red frosting.  And I also notice the flower you bring to me.  The gun, let’s say, is the green stem and the bullet hole through your hand is a red flower, a corsage, and you have come as a soldier for his bride.”

            The boy looked down at his hand and that was when the pain started. It was agonizing, like a storm in his hand, with piercing lightning.  If he was numb before, he wasn’t now, and he began to cry.

            He leaned into Lucy, and cried with many kinds of pain into the quilt.  Then he stood and ran to the kitchen and tore hastily a piece of kitchen cloth as a makeshift bandage.  Shuddering in pain and fright, he ran from the house, the pistol in his good hand and the storm and the blood in the other.

            He ran a few paces from the door, then stopped.  He looked out across the empty, quiet landscape and realized that he had nowhere to go.  Even in such great pain, there was no one who would take him.  He turned back to the ranch house and saw the new holes he’d created with his gun.  Then he gnashed his teeth in pain, and tore from the house in a sprint.  He needed to find a some place for his hand.  He needed to find mother, also.

            He got to the end of the road, then stopped and knelt over.  He was breathing hard, and the air that came out of him was as cold as the air that went in.  It was frigid in South Dakota, and the wind was moving.  There was no smell or sound upon it.  The cold wind carried everything away in the winter, like a silent train heading for the coast.

            Then there came a sound, and the boy looked up to see his mother coming in the wagon. There was a man with her that the boy did not recognize.  The boy stood as mother approached at a slow pace.  She stopped the wagon next to him and the boy looked at her but he didn’t know what to say or how to look or what to do.  He put the pistol in his trousers and clutched his hand and breathed hard. Then he looked at the man and hated him.

            The man looked straight ahead at the house for a long moment, and there was satisfaction in his eyes, as if he’d already gotten what he came for somehow.  Then he turned toward the boy and smiled.

            “Did you shoot yourself in the hand, boy?” he asked.

            The boy hated him. He wore a black suit with a white shirt.  Dakota Inc. kind.

            “I did, and it is very painful.”

            “It happens,” the man said.  Then he pulled a coin from his pocket and threw it to the boy.  The boy instinctively reached out with both hands and caught it, and there was a searing pain as the coin touched the wound.

            “It is a good day for me,” the man said.  “I knew this woman had a son your age that was working for Van Carlo.  I’d heard about this son, how he killed a blue soldier in Richmond.  We all thought there was a very good chance that one of us would see a bullet eventually.”

            The man smiled again and shook his head and chuckled.

            “Well, I’ve sure seen the bullet.  It’s right there in your hand.  So we’ll just head up to the house and do what we came to do, eh?”

            “The bullet is not in my hand,” the boy said.  “It went through it.”

            “Then it is lost.  And that’s just as good, I suppose.”

            The boy did not reply.  He looked with uncertainty and disappointment at the hole in his hand. The pain had subsided by this point. The hand had mostly gone numb.

            “Yep, it is a good day for me,” the man chuckled. “A boy who shoots his own hand will have trouble finding the bullet, I think.  If I were a gambling man, I’d say it’s not in him to find it.”

            “You are not a gambler,” the boy said.  “I’ve never seen you in the casino.  You are from Dakota Inc..”

            “I am from Dakota Inc..  We are all from Dakota Inc..”

            “But there was one man who did not have a black suit.  He came first, just a few weeks before you.”

            The man nodded.  “That was Jimmy.  I knew him.  He is dead now because he was not supposed to come.  He broke the rules.  So, you see, we are all from Dakota Inc., or we are not at all, understand?”

            “What rules?”

            “The new rules. Your mother is very comely, so it was important that we make new rules. We make them every day, it seems.”

            The man sighed and looked anticipatory and bored at the same time.

            “Take the coin,” he said.  “Go to town and see the doctor.  Tell him you are from me.  He’ll know better than to think you are lying.”

            Mother said, “When the doctor fixes your hand, bring back the bandage.  Do not leave it there.”

            “Who is this man, mother?” he said.

             Mother did not respond.  She just stared straight ahead at the ranch house and started the wagon moving slowly again.  After the horse, the tired horse, who moved with her head lower than her tail, had gone a few paces, mother turned back to the boy.

            “Do not speak to me again, Jason,” she said.

            “Trust me, boy,” said the smiling man from Dakota Inc.. “And go and fix your hand.”

            So the boy went to Shadow.  None of the men from Dakota Inc. bothered him as he walked down the street because of the coin in his hand.  He found the doctor and gave him the coin, and the doctor fixed his hand.  He worked without many words.  He just muttered softly under his breath and said “There, there, lad” in an Irish accent a few of times. “There, there, lad.”

            After his hand was fixed and had a new bandage he went back to the ranch house, but he left the old bandage at the doctor’s.  When he finally remembered that mother had told him not to leave it, he had gone too far and it was too late to turn back to get it.  Surely the doctor had disposed of the bandage by now, the boy thought.  Then he marveled at what a fool he was, and at how quickly he could forget mother’s words.

            The boy arrived home a few hours later and stood at the door of the ranch house.  But he did not go in.  He heard Lucy coughing weakly, and there was the now-familiar smell from inside.  The boy could smell it from under the door, and from around the top and through the weak spots in the wood of the door. Rotten. Meaty. Organic, but somehow unnatural. He turned away from the door and felt the odorless wind of South Dakota across his face.  The wind took everything away.  Everything.  The cold numbed his face to where he could not feel it and it to where seemed as flat and featureless as the very land around him.  He could not bring himself to go back inside the house.

            He went back to Shadow and wandered the streets.  No one from Dakota Inc. bothered him because they saw that, even though he no longer had the coin, he did have a new bandage on his hand.

The Strangers gang rode out from camp, making their way slowly towards Shadow.  There they would stay for a while, just on the outskirts near the great rocks, then they would head for the mountain.

The hat Rifle wore was still acting like a bandage for his bruised and bloodied head, thanks to the pistol whip from Fire.  But his mouth hurt too, and unfortunately there was no bandage for his mouth.  Not even any bandanas like Leonard had to cover up the pain.  The only thing on his face was the large fish hook that bound his lips together.  But the fish hook was getting harder and harder to see as the blood began to build up and cake around it.

Behind his fastened lips was half a tongue.  The other half was back at camp, lying in the dirt near the opening of his tent which was still flapping.  The other Strangers had taken their tents with them, but not Rifle.  He left it, set up and empty.

 With half a tongue and lips bound together with a hook it was hard for Rifle to speak, or to cry, or even to breath.  So he said nothing.  He kept his eyes forward…so far forward that they seemed to drift far out in front of his head, just above the nose of his horse.  He looked this way and that, and thought about the fact that he would track this boy down, just as he had promised Leonard.  He would track him all the way to the top of the mountain if he had to.

The Strangers rode on and on in silence until the morning turned to dusk.  They were just silhouettes against the horizon.  The coat of Leonard, who was the last in the line of Strangers, billowed forward with the South Dakota prairie wind and threw an abnormally long and inconsistent shadow across his gang.

Rifle noticed that it was getting on nighttime, and once again he thought about resting in his tent on his bedroll.  He was tired, and could not help but to think of dreaming.

He thought about the fact that he had been dreaming more and more about the strange woman.  Not the woman from the Ranch house—not the wife of the fat man.  No, the woman he saw the other day.  He wondered what she was like, for he did not get to talk to her.  He wondered if her fingers were cold just like his own mother’s fingers were always cold because of the wind that came through the thin walls of their home in South Dakota, a long time ago.

But on that day, Leonard also knew that Rifle had seen the woman.  He told Rifle to forget the woman, she was helpless.  But Rifle could not forget her because she reminded him of his mother.  And that night he laid on his bedroll in his tent and he dreamed of his mother.  The next day he got up early and went out and looked around the camp and tried to find the woman again.  But she was gone, Leonard said.  Leonard was up early too, and had sent the woman away.

Rifle was very sad, and was angry with Leonard for sending the woman away, and not telling him and not letting him speak with her.  When Rifle saw the woman, things made sense to him.  Even Leonard and the Strangers and everything they did made some sense to him.  But this…this sending the woman away, it made no sense at all, and Rifle was very disappointed and angry.

It was that morning, after he had told Rifle that he sent the woman away, when Leonard told him that he and Fire would ride to the ranch house and collect the man called Holland for Dakota Inc.  Rifle was not looking forward to the ride because he would have a lot of time to be tempted to think about the woman he saw in camp.

He was tempted and gave into it.

The day went by and he rode on and on with Fire toward the Ranch house.  He realized that the strange woman was gone for good, and he found himself greatly missing her, and his own mother.

And now, as the Strangers gang rode to Shadow, and after they would go to the mountain, Rifle was missing his mother some more, and remembering how cold her fingers were when he was a little boy.  Cold from the cold wind of South Dakota.

All of the Strangers looked the same.  All of the Strangers wore ironic deputy badges on their vests, which were covered in dirt and dust and tarnish.  The people who had seen the Strangers gang and their badges did not know what the badges meant. Most of the Strangers were ex-lawmen, so that might have explained it.  But then Rifle knew that one had been a Confederate soldier at the very beginning of the War and another a bounty hunter from Mexico, and Leonard’s history was an utter mystery to both Stranger and man, so who knew what the badges meant, really?  Probably nothing.  And knowing Leonard, that was the whole idea.

The Strangers all wore pale gray hats and identical long gray coats that were only ever taken off when they were bathing, which was usually in a cold river, or a stream, or under the rain.  The Strangers did not like to be indoors, and they never went inside except for a short time, and never for the night.  South Dakota was where they belonged, Leonard told them.  And outside was South Dakota.  There was too much individuality inside.  People kept all the things they brought with them inside, he’d say.  But when they came out into the frigid western wind, they were all the same, and they knew where they really were.

So their coats were their covering, Leonard told them.  Gray, as the sky of South Dakota was gray.  When it rained, or snowed, the coats got wet, and stayed wet as long as the sky was wet.  When the coats dried, the sky was dry.  Their long gray coats moved as the sky of South Dakota moved.  When seen from a distance, the Strangers blended in neatly with the sky and the ground of South Dakota, having something of both of these things in the way they dressed and moved.  They were not invisible, of course.  The Strangers could be seen, if you looked carefully.  But they looked like ghosts in rags when compared to other riders on the plains.

Their horses were as sullen and quiet as the Strangers were, and pale, every one of them.  Spiritless animals, they were.  They could move quickly, but never seemed to hurry.  When they ran, their hooves moved lightly across the dirt, and did not make much noise or kick up much dust.  They were vapid when moving at any significant speed, formless pale blurs beneath the Strangers.  Just fog.

The infrequent descriptions of the Strangers gang in the papers or telegrams always seemed more suited to geography or weather than to men.  This was a good thing for the Strangers.  It kept potential pursuers—outlaws, the army, federal marshals or other lawmen—chasing rocks and clouds half the time instead of the gang.

Leonard led the Strangers with his one good eye, an eye that bled a little constantly from the hairline cut that ran from the bottom right corner to the upper left.  It was a cut that never healed.  Were it not for the blood, one could not see this cut unless they were very close to it, and the only man that had ever gotten that close to Leonard’s eye was the man who slashed it.

            Rifle looked up and saw the mountain in the distance.  To the right, about two miles from where the Strangers were, was the town of Shadow.  About three miles to the north was the ranch house where they had taken the fat man, Holland.  To the left of the Strangers, about a hundred yards away, were the large rocks.  Leonard told the Strangers to halt.  He told them to set up camp and to prepare dinner.  Rifle wasn’t hungry of course, but he was tired and ready to sleep and ready to dream about the woman.

            Leonard told them they would stay there for a little while.  Then they would move towards the mountain, and Van Carlo’s good boy.

            This journey, Rifle knew, all started with the meeting with Dakota Inc., several months ago.  That had been the first time the Strangers were at the large rocks outside of Shadow, because Leonard had learned that the outlaw Company was hiring gangs to work for them.

Leonard greatly hated outlaws.  Many times he would take their money, then trick them and kill them.  He used them as tools, but they were not his tools like the Strangers were his tools.  He hated them. They were simply fuel to be burned up as the Strangers moved around South Dakota.

The thing Leonard was most interested in was finding Van Carlo.  The Strangers would go from town to town, working occasionally with outlaw groups to make some money, tricking them, killing them, and looking for Van Carlo.  Leonard had sent Rifle and Fire to Shadow for a time, to negotiate a little deal with Dakota Inc., and to look around the town.

Dakota Inc. found Leonard in the way that it was whispered to them by a Stranger.  The Stranger was Fire, and he spent some time in Shadow milling around, very easily blending in and looking like someone people knew, and like someone who had lived there for years.  Fire was very good at this sort of thing.

He heard that Dakota Inc. was in need of gangs for hire, and he was the one who suggested Leonard and his Strangers gang.  Dakota Inc. felt that they knew this gang, and somehow had gotten it into their minds that they had heard some good things about them.  The Strangers worked clean, like the wind, and never left a trail.

But hired guns were a risky business, and Dakota Inc. understood this.  They were an expensive commodity that had no real loyalty.  Not even to money, and that was the problem. Hired guns could kill anyone they chose, regardless of the money.  And sometimes they did.  And if they were good, then they worked clean, and got away with it.  But Dakota Inc. also knew that hired guns were tools that, like any dangerous tool, had to be used every so often, whether you wanted to or not.  A saw might fall and cut your hand, but you still pulled it out of the shed when you needed it.

Fire told Dakota Inc. to send a man with a yellow mustache and yellow hair to a certain place outside of Shadow near some rocks.  When the man arrived, he was to waive a white handkerchief around his head.  Then the man was to remove his hat and put a black hood over his face with two holes cut out for the eyes.  Then he would put his hat back on, over the hood.

After this, three Strangers would approach him, and the man with the yellow mustache was to draw his gun and point it at the Strangers.  Then he would lead the Strangers at gunpoint to Shadow and to the place where they would meet with Dakota Inc.  The man with the yellow mustache was not to speak at all during the ride to Shadow or during the meeting, and was not to remove his hood until Leonard and his Strangers had left his sight.

***

“Why use the Strangers?” Leonard said. “We know you.  You’ve shot men in the streets of Shadow before, for everyone to see.”

Rocky Mote, the head of Dakota Inc. smiled and lit a cigar. He’d gotten over his initial shock of seeing the man, Leonard.  If he was a man, that is, Rocky thought.  There was something unnerving about the Stranger, and he found it difficult to be completely at ease around him.  He was there, standing in the middle of the relatively barren Dakota Inc. office, but there was an emptiness about him…a literal emptiness.  As if you could walk through him if you wanted to.  But not in a ghostly way.  It was not like he was some sort of apparition.  It was like he wasn’t there at all. Like you were talking to the wall, or to the air, and the wall and the air were talking back.  Rocky found himself dying to look behind the gray coat of the Stranger.  He honestly did not know what he’d find.  He half expected nothing at all.

“True,” Rocky said.  “And also true is that you know us.  This is the very reason why we hire men like you now.  The marshals and the Pinkertons have been sniffing closer lately.  So it appears that you aren’t the only ones who know us. Even the army is never far away these days.”

Leonard nodded sympathetically.

“Eastern hypocrites,” Rocky continued, “grumbling about cleaning up the west.  They send the Indians into dry gulches with nothing but diseased infected blankets.  Yankee factories with facades like shouting skulls grind their lifeless workers into meat cakes.  And yet they come out here to clean us up?  Six hundred thousand dead from the War heaped up with legs and arms twisted like circus freaks, and they’ve come to teach us ethics?”

Leonard nodded again. He approached the desk where Rocky was sitting and grunted.  On the desk was a ledger, with rows and columns of numbers and dollar signs scratched all up and down it.

“Eastern morality is simply the turning of pages,” Leonard said, leafing through the pages of the ledger, “one after the other, on and on.”  He kept turning pages until he found a blank one, then he stopped and put his finger in the middle of it. “It’s just business.  Same as everything.  Everything but the Strangers.”

Rocky reached up and snapped the ledger closed.  Leonard deftly and smoothly removed his hand before the book could catch his fingers.

With a growl, Rocky quickly put the ledger in one of the desk’s drawers.

“We do not want any connection to Holland Credence.  None at all,” he said, giving Leonard a stern look. Then he sighed and leaned back in his chair.  He looked slightly despondent. “The days of the men behind these desks going out and shooting a man dead in the streets are over.  Now, we stay behind the desks as much as we can.  It’s better for business.”

The Dakota Inc. boss lifted his left leg onto the knee of his right and removed his boot.  Grimacing, he rubbed his foot gingerly.  His feet always hurt these days.  He wore nice boots, but they were too tight.  But he liked it that way.  It reminded him of the dangers of being too comfortable.

“Your feet hurt,” Leonard noted.

“Yes.  I should put something else on, but these boots were expensive.”

“But you’d be more comfortable in something else,” Leonard said.

Rocky looked angry.  “I will decide my own comfort.  No one does it for me in South Dakota.”

Leonard’s eye began to bleed a little heavier; the bandannas went in and out of his mouth a little quicker.

“I see you prefer sitting to standing because standing makes your feet hurt,” Leonard said.  “It would seem that the ground of South Dakota has much to say about your comfort, Mr. Mote, originally of Oklahoma.”

Rocky looked at the Stranger with the one eye, and decided that he did not like him one bit.

“What are we talking about here?” he said, not hiding his annoyance. “Boots?  Posture preferences of an old man?  This reminds me of the days of fighting the Mexicans. I understood just enough of their babble for it to be maddening.  So let’s cut it.  I’m paying you, remember.  I was told by one of your Strangers to not ask you questions and to let you do what you do.  I expect the same from you, bandit.”

The depression in the bandanna that was Leonard’s mouth changed into the shape of a smile.  The eye bled even heavier.

“Bandit?  I’m the masked bandit?  Oh yes, now I understand,” he nodded, “but you.  You’ve been killing with your face uncovered and your head bald for years, and have never seen the gallows.” He pointed a finger at Rocky.  “Not because you could not be connected, but because you had power around here.  If you cannot do it yourself now, then what power do you have left?  What authority?  The President can come to South Dakota and kill the Indians in the broad daylight.  But what can you do?”

Rocky snickered.  “Money is power.  Murder is not.  Murder is something that money allows you to do.  It’s just another expensive commodity that most cannot afford.  Who cares how it’s done?  Who cares who the tool is?”  Rocky stood, and pointed a finger back at Leonard.  “But you need to understand something, Stranger.  The President is like you.  You’re a pauper, just like he is.”

“And we will take your money,” Leonard said, dropping his hand and stepping back.  “But this deal marks the end of your organization.  Hiring out this sort of thing is a gamble of long odds.  Just ask Van Carlo.”

At the mention of the gambler’s name, Rocky’s head snapped up.  He stared at leader of the Strangers with a clenched jaw.  Then he relaxed, and breathed out slowly.

“You never mind, him,” he said.  He lifted a satchel of money and dropped it on the desk with a leathery thud.  “Just do it.” Then he tipped his hat tersely, and walked quickly out of the room.

Leonard tipped his own hat and nodded at the man’s back.

“Now there is a man whose own mother would no longer recognize,” he said a few moments later.  “She would say, ‘What has happened to my darling boy from Oklahoma?  He seems so different.’”

The man with the yellow mustache was still in the office, wearing the black hood.  He stood near a window, uncertain as to what to do.

“Take off your hood,” Leonard said to him.

“But I was told…”

“How dare you,” Leonard said angrily.  “Show your face.” He pulled a long rifle from somewhere behind his coat and, with one arm only, aimed it at the man’s chest.

There was fear in the eyes inside the holes.  When the man removed the hood, the fear was still there.

“Where are you from?” Leonard asked.

“New York,” the man replied, trying to hide the fear in his voice.

Leonard lowered his rifle. “Don’t ever cover your face again.  You are no longer Leonard.  Now, it’s just me again.”

Then, all three Strangers left with the money.

Bullet Two

Two men came on horseback to the ranch house as the sun was setting. As they came across the land, they appeared to float quickly, like dust across the plains in front of a strong wind.

They knew nothing of the hat shop or any other specifics about the man’s deal with Dakota Inc.  They knew that Dakota Inc. had sent them to the man, but they did not know why.  It wasn’t their place to know.  They were instructed to speak little, and to ask no questions of anyone, not even of themselves.

The heads of these two men were like cannon balls. They leveled everything.  Heads full of metal, but they had very good eyes and ears.

Nothing rattled or clinked in their pockets.  Only the howls of coyotes and wailing were in the pockets of the men.  There was no money.  They carried no extra bullets, but only what they had in their guns.  Two pistols each, and each bullet was stuck in its chamber as snug as an egg in a robin’s nest.  A greedy man takes too many bullets, Leonard always said.  Dakota Inc. carried bags of bullets and bags of money, Leonard said.  Dakota Inc. was greedy.

The men were sent by Dakota Inc., but of course they were not part of the Company.  They were part of a group of men that Dakota Inc. hired for the job, and that group of men was led by Leonard.  Leonard’s men looked nothing like Dakota Inc.  They did not wear fancy black suits, and they did not jingle or shine or boast.

The men had come.

The men were there, at the ranch house.

Before, Dakota Inc. used to send their own men on errands like this.  That was back before the War ended; before the blue army from the east came swarming to the west like the locusts.  Now, Dakota Inc. couldn’t get away with things so easily.  They could not be so open. So they hired other men to go, and made for themselves very good alibis.

The two strange men got off their horses and walked to the door of the ranch house.  Their walking was as images floating across a wavy storefront window. And like those images, they approached silently, their boots scarcely making any noise upon the ground.

Lucy and mother saw them coming and knew there was nothing good about it.  The two women held each other until the men got to the door, and then mother let go and ran to the door to meet them…to charge them. Father was in the bedroom where he always was.  Jason was off in Shadow, working for the gambler, Van Carlo.

Lucy coughed and cowered near the tiny, lukewarm fire.  She was afraid, and longed to be back in Richmond.  But all she could think about was a room with a great hole in the ceiling and the moon looking down.  A hole made by a cannonball in the ceiling of the row house in Richmond.  It was all the same, she thought.  Everything was South Dakota now.  Everything was just a room with a hole.

Mother saw the men through the window as she approached the front door.  The men were very tall and lean.  So lean that they looked as if they might disappear if they were to turn sideways.  They were dark, too, with shadows falling all around their faces in places that most people did not have shadows.  As their faces moved the shadows remained, the darkness shifting inconsistently with the light.

They looked sick and diseased in their thinness and darkness.  Death was their disease, mother thought, but they did not die from it.

Mother knew instantly that she did not care for these men.  She cared nothing.  She would not care if they simply died in the doorway. She hated the men, and even though she knew that her hatred was just an impostor of strength, it made her feel better to hate them.

‘Yes, let them die in the doorway,’ she thought as she flung open the door.  ‘Let them die there and let their bones turn white and smooth until they look as flat as the land around us.’

But her heart fell and she knew it would never come to that.  She could tell that she stood no chance against these men.  Even if she fought them and got lucky and they died in the doorway as she wished, more would come.  There were always more men to come.  Just like in Richmond.

Mother stumbled back inside the house as they came for her.  She caught her balance, and then ran to grab a broom that was resting against the wall near the door.  She turned and waved the broom at them, as if to shoo them away.  They looked like animals and she would treat them like animals…rodents and critters.  Unwelcome by all, down to the very last person in the entire world.

But then, an instant later, she decided against the broom and instead grabbed the shotgun that was resting next to it against the wall.  They were not as small as rodents.  No.  They were the wolf or the coyote.  You did not use a broom on those animals.

She felt the thin, cold trigger on her finger.  The men moved quickly then.  For men such as these must move quickly to avoid the judgment.  Mother marveled at their speed, and she did not even have time to raise the gun up to her waist before one of the men snatched it from her hands. He took it and handed it to the other man.  The other man quickly put it somewhere inside his long, gray coat, and then continued moving forward, just as smoothly and easily as if the shotgun had never been there at all.

The two men turned mother around and roughly pushed her into the house.  Lucy tried to scream, but only her coughing came out, and this was a sound just as loud as and even more terrible than screaming.  She tried to stand, but in her fit of coughing her body convulsed, and she tumbled forward into the fire.

The fire.  Just moments before she had been kneeling in front of it, and with a coal had been drawing a picture of a little bird on thick paper.  But now she was face first in the fire, and when she pushed back, she burned her hands badly, and then she did scream.

She stood up quickly, shaking violently, and then fell to the floor, on top of the picture of the little bird.  The weight of her body and her dress smudged the picture and blurred the lines together and wrinkled the paper.

Lucy rolled over to look at the picture, and saw that it was ruined.  This greatly angered her.  She saw that the picture was crushed and smudged, and she screamed in rage.  Then she took the paper and threw it into the fire where it burned to ash, just before she fell back down on the rug.  The ash rose and floated away.  Flying, she thought to herself in the midst of her rage.  Flying beautifully, just like a bird should.

The men still did not talk or make much of any sound at all.  Even the sound of their boots on the floor was muted.  Their violence was their sound, and it covered up all other sounds around them.

Lucy was still screaming, but then the screaming turned once again to coughing, and mother was comforted just a little by this.  It meant that Lucy was still just dying from the cough and not from the fire.

Mother turned and beat her fists against the men’s coats.  She smelled the smell of duty on them.  It smelled just like it did in Richmond: a horrible, dusty, unwashed, nomadic smell, and all manner of the smells of nature.

Her blows fell with no more effect upon the men than the swish of a horse’s tail. One of the men made a casual sweep with his arm and knocked her down. As she fell she reached up with a clawed hand and tore something from the man’s chest.  It was cold and hard, with sharp edges.  Was it the man’s heart?  She closed her fingers around it, and then crashed onto the floor.  The cold, hard thing dug into her hand and drew blood, which seeped between her fingers.  She looked up at the man, and saw a hole torn in his vest just where his heart would be.  She waited for him to collapse and die, but he didn’t. Useless heart, she thought.  She drew the hard thing to her and decided she would keep it, and hide it from the man.  She would take something from him, just like he had come to take something from her.

“Where is your husband, woman,” the first man said.  He had the voice of a coyote: a soft rumble, followed by a howl. “He is in the bed,” the first man continued, answering his own question.  Then he continued speaking to mother:  “Help me find him.  I know he is in the bedroom.  We have come for him.”

Mother couldn’t think straight.  All she could do was scream, “He has no boots!”

The second man spoke, and he had the voice of an eagle:  screechy and abrupt, with the beginnings and ends of his sentences sharp like dagger points.

“We must take him.  He will go far.  South Dakota is very large.”

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” mother screamed.  “Is it a dream?  Please tell me it is a dream!”

“It makes no difference,” the first man said.

             Mother staggered to her feet.  She moved away from them awkwardly, and stood next to Lucy who was on the floor near the fire, sobbing and coughing.

            “Then they sent you,” she said.

            “Yes,” the first man said.

            “And when did you know you’d be called upon to do this to us?”

            “We knew from the minute Dakota Inc. saw you get off the train.”

            Mother buried her face in her hands and began to sob.

            “Eyes.  Eyes everywhere.  I knew it!  How can a place so empty have so many eyes?  Eyes everywhere, where so many other things should be.” She fell to her knees, next to Lucy and continued to sob greatly.

            “I would take the noise of the cannon; the thundering noise and the heaviness of Richmond and the War.  But this quiet, and all of these watching eyes,” mother said.

            “It is true,” the second man said.  “We know what Dakota Inc. knows.  And yes, they have many eyes.”

            “Though perhaps they are not all in the right places,” the first man said.

            The second man turned quickly to the first man.

“I think you should be more careful with your words, Rifle,” the second man said.

            Mother shook her head and stared at the floor.

            “Done in,” she said.  “And not even by men.  At least the blue soldiers were men.  But these?  Dakota Inc.  They are trains on twisted tracks, casting huge, iron shadows.  And you they pull you behind them and us they run straight through.”

            Then she looked up at the men defiantly.

            “Don’t they?  Right behind them,” she said.

            The first man struck mother hard on the cheek, and the blow felt like the butt of a gun, not a hand.

            “We will not muzzle the ox, woman.  But we could.  Do not speak to us as though we have no choices,” he said.

            “You need to stop speaking now, Rifle,” the second man said sternly.  “Let’s get the man and go.  Leonard is not patient these days.”

            The first man nodded. His gaze shifted to the hallway and the open bedroom door at the end of it.  Then, in unison, both men began to move down the hall. The first man stopped and turned back to mother.  He marveled that she was still conscious after the blow, though her mouth was bleeding and she was not clearheaded enough even to sob anymore.

            “Don’t worry, woman,” the man said.  “Leonard will soon forbid Dakota Inc.  It is possible that your son will be left alone.”

            The second man’s eyes widened in disbelief. “I will have to tell Leonard about this, Rifle,” he said.  “You have been,” he paused, trying to find the words. ”Irresponsible with Leonard’s voice,” he finished.

            The first man pointed to the room.  “Go get him,” he demanded.  “And let me speak for Leonard.”

            “I think you should speak less, or tell Leonard to come himself, next time.  You sound very much like Rifle to me,” the second man said, spitting on the ground and giving the first man a suspicious look.  Then he turned and went to the bedroom.

Lucy stood quickly and ran out of the house.  At this point the sun had set and darkness had fallen, and Lucy was quickly lost in it.  Even the sound of her footsteps seemed to vanish only seconds after she was through the front door.

            Darkness had come with them, Lucy thought as she plowed forward into the freezing cold night.  And the darkness was following closely behind, as a dog follows its master.  Except these men were not the masters.  Dakota Inc. was, and Dakota Inc. meant to be master over everyone and everything.

‘But is it really this way?’ she cried in her mind.  And if it was, did it have to be?  All her memories of Richmond were fond ones.  All of them, in spite of the War.  And by the same way she survived Richmond and the War knew that she could survive South Dakota, too.  More than that, it was her only choice, for it was the only way she knew how to survive.

            Lucy stopped abruptly and knelt over coughing and panting and shivering.  There was blood in her mouth and she could taste it.  She looked all around and saw nothing but the faceless black of the wilderness night.  There were no bright windows from the row houses or other buildings, or the fires of the burning street lamps.  Richmond was never this dark.  Even after the blue soldiers came, there were fires burning everywhere at night.  But in South Dakota there seemed no bright side at all for her imagination to seize.

She turned back and saw the faint glimmer of the fire through the front door of the ranch house.  Reluctantly and weakly, she made her way back to it.  When she got to the house she stopped and did not go inside, preferring to linger at the window, trying to stifle her coughing but at the same time knowing that it didn’t matter.  The men were not there for her.  And even if they were, they did not have to take her anywhere to have her.  It was the same with mother.

***

            The first man, Rifle, watched the second man (who was named Fire) pull the heavy man from the bed.  The heavy man gave them no resistance, but he did not willingly rise get to his feet.  He rolled from the bed and landed on the floor with a meaty thud, and there he lay like a corpse.  The man called Fire had to beat him a few times to get him to move on his own.  Finally the heavy man got to his knees, but after that he could rise no further. He just stared at the ground breathing heavily and said nothing.

 Then Rifle turned back and looked down the hallway at mother, who was on her knees and holding her face, dazed, and looking at the floor.  He tilted his head.  Slowly, he walked towards her.  He reached down and put a hand gently on her head.

            “I’m sorry, woman.  It…” he paused, looking uncomfortable.  “It’s not me, you understand.  The Strangers….”

            Suddenly, behind him, he heard running footsteps.  He turned just in time to see Fire rushing at him with his gun drawn.  Before Rifle had a chance to move, the butt of Fire’s gun came crashing upon his head with the force of a falling brick.

            Rifle’s hat came off his head and he collapsed to his knees next to mother.  She looked over at him and saw that he had a bald spot in the middle of his head, surrounded by long, stringy gray hair, thick and tangled as old twine in some places.  The bald spot was white as the moon.

            “Rifle, when you speak you will speak only one thing!” Fire said.

            Rifle groaned and nodded, and rubbed the top of his head.  The bald spot was starting to bleed and swell.

            “Y…yes.  I will speak only one thing,” he said.

            “Say the one thing!”

            “When do I get paid?” Rifle said.  It came out as a confused whimper.

            “And what is the answer?”

            Mother held her hands over her ears and then began to sob again, loudly.

            The man called Fire was obviously annoyed at this.  He put his gun directly over her head and fired.  It was loud and startled her, and she sobbed more quietly.

            “S…soon,” said Rifle, still dazed.  “Soon.  There is nothing that is not soon.  And the payment will be worth the work, according to Leonard.  That is the answer.”

            Fire stood up straight and put his gun away somewhere inside his long, gray coat.  He nodded. “Good.  Now get up, Rifle.  Let’s get the man and go.”

            Rifle nodded and put his hat gently back on his head.  Standing, he followed Fire reluctantly to the bedroom.  There were shuffling sounds, and soon they emerged, carrying father.  And though father was not dead, he hung limp just like a dead man would hang, with stunned and pointless eyes, between the two strangers.

            “Please do not take my husband,” mother whispered as the two men walked past her, with father, and out the door.  But they did not hear her.

            As soon as the men left, Lucy ran inside the house and clung to mother and they cried out in front of the dying fire together.  The men rode and rode into the night, barely thinking about the ride.  These days, they never thought about the trails that they knew so well.  The moon fell upon the wide plains before them and made them and the land around them as pale as the moon itself, so that South Dakota resembled the moon.

            When mother and Lucy stopped crying the house was utterly silent.  The sound of the horses riding into the South Dakota eternity had long since passed away.  Everything was quiet, exactly like it had been for weeks before the two strangers ever came to them.

***

 

            It was a wide open space, with just a few trees around.  The sky was a bright, yet dismal gray, as were the flat, seamless clouds which covered it.  The light in the sky was strange.  It was both natural and unnatural at the same time.

It was morning of the next day, and the Stranger called Rifle sat by the campfire.  The collar of his long gray coat was up around his ears and his hat was pulled low.  He wasn’t eating, even though it was breakfast time in the camp.  He and Fire had had a long ride last night, and he knew he should be hungry.  But he did not feel like eating.  He did not feel well at all.  The ride had been a cold one, he thought, and the top of his head throbbed from where Fire hit him with the butt of the pistol.  Rightly hit him, Rifle thought to himself.  He deserved to be hit.  He’d been hit before, but why did it hurt so much this time, he wondered.  Why so much more than usual?  And with the swelling, he felt like his head was two sizes too big for his hat.

So he didn’t eat.  He just poked disinterestedly at the campfire with a stick.

Rifle glanced up and looked at his bleak canvas tent that was set up near the fire.  The tent was empty last night because he and Fire were in the saddle.  The front of the tent was open, and the heavy canvas flaps were waving and making thick popping noises as the wind blew them around.  Inside the tent was a bedroll that was still tied, and a small pillow was tucked inside it.  It had provided no cushion last night, for he did not lay on it.

Rifle could see the edge of the bedroll near the opening of the tent, and he realized that he was tired.  He thought he would very much like to go inside the tent and unravel that bedroll.  But it wasn’t time for that now.  Even though the ride was long, and they rode all night, it was now daylight and Leonard said there were things to do.

There were always things to do.  Things like the thing he and Fire did last night. Those things were tiring, though, Rifle thought, and he wished he could sleep a little.

Rifle turned his head and saw Fire near a tree a few yards away, speaking with Leonard, who was the leader of the Strangers Gang.

The other Strangers were sitting around the campfire, but unlike Rifle, they were all eating.  They were the tools of Leonard, and, like Rifle and Fire, had been given new names.  They were given these names so that they knew exactly how to answer Leonard and just what to do when they were called.  The names of the other Strangers were:  Blanket, Hammer, Wagon, Rope, and Fence. And though they resembled men, Leonard did not consider his Strangers human.

Including Rifle and Fire, there were seven Strangers.  Eight, if you counted Leonard, but none in the gang ever did.  Leonard wasn’t a Stranger like they were Strangers.  Not really.  Leonard didn’t seem to be anything real or familiar.  He only had the outline of a human being, which was barely a resemblance.  He was more of an experience than he was a man.  He would sometimes say he was the mask of South Dakota.  A human-like image that represented all of the things the Strangers did in South Dakota.  But that was as close to being a man as he would admit.

Rifle had been doing the things the Strangers did for many years now.  He knew well of them, and they were like the things that he and Fire did last night to the man and his wife and sick daughter out near Shadow.  They were usually dreadful things.

Yes, Rifle thought, Leonard was a sort of semblance of human form, like a mask, but nothing more.  And the other Strangers weren’t much closer, all of them having forgotten the names they were born with.

 Except for his left eye, Leonard kept his head and face covered completely with several dirty gray bandannas.  There were always gloves on his hands so you could not see his fingers and a gray hat always on his head.  His long, gray coat always covered him from his neck to the soles of his boots.  There were no holes in the coat.  Any holes were quickly patched, and there were many patches, but no holes.

Rifle looked at the other Strangers around the fire.  He thought to himself that it was good he was not hungry because breakfast time was almost over, and he would not have enough time to eat now anyway.  The Strangers finished up their breakfast and then all there was left to do was to urinate on the fire.  One of them stood up to do just that, and the others filed away to get things ready for the day.  None of them spoke.  They were not permitted to speak, except to ask only one question, and they were also allowed to answer their own question.  That question was: When do I get paid?  And the answer was always the same.  The answer was:  Soon, and the payment will be worth the work.

If there was a second person in charge of the Stranger’s gang, it was Rifle, and then came Fire.  Of the Strangers, only Rifle and Fire, whom Leonard referred to as his other voices, were allowed to speak and think beyond that one question and one answer.  South Dakota was a large place, and Leonard needed extra voices sometimes, and Rifle and Fire were them.  But Rifle and Fire had to keep their words and thoughts within boundaries, which was why Rifle was hit in the head last night.  He had strayed beyond the boundary.

At that moment, near the campfire, Rifle felt uncomfortable because he knew that the one eye of Leonard was on him.  The one eye he kept uncovered for seeing; the eye that was always bleeding, just a little.  Rifle pulled his collar up a little higher and his hat a little lower.  He was very tired.  The man named Holland was fat and heavy and dead weight on the horse last night, and Rifle was exhausted. For a man who had nothing, Holland Credence was very heavy.

Near the tree, Fire was telling Leonard about the things Rifle said last night to the woman, as well as something else.  He told Leonard that the boy, Jason, was still alive, and that it was true that this boy had been speaking and working with Van Carlo, the gambler, and the gambler liked the boy very much.

Leonard nodded when he heard this news.  All along he had thought that this was true.  When he went and spoke with Dakota Inc., and when they told him that they wanted the man named Holland as payment for the debt, he was suspicious that Van Carlo was in town and that he had a new telegraph; a telegraph from the East, not from South Dakota, and a telegraph that Van Carlo very much trusted.  He was the son of the man, Holland.  This boy had seen the War in Richmond, and it was rumored that he’d even killed one of the blue soldiers.

It was the whole story, Fire told Leonard.  There was nothing more Dakota Inc. knew.  Leonard nodded again.  He always told his Strangers to make sure they got the whole story when dealing with men like Dakota Inc.  Make them tell you everything, he said.

Leonard and Fire walked over to Rifle, and the other Strangers gathered around and stood behind them.  Leonard’s bleeding eye, all that could be seen from beneath his bandannas and his hat, began to bleed a little more as he approached.  This happened sometimes, especially when it came to times of punishment.

Punishment.  What Leonard liked to call “things”.  He never called punishment by name.  It was just things.  But Rifle knew what the things were.

Inside his head, Rifle heard Leonard’s voice.  It told him that he was indeed a good boy.  He was strong and useful.  The voice praised Rifle’s ability to ride the horse well, and his skills at tracking and shooting. Yes, you are a very good boy, Rifle, the voice said.  But there are things needed to make you better.

Rifle stood up and faced Leonard.  He looked uncertain.  Nervous.  He didn’t bother to hide it.

“When do I get paid,” Rifle said, his voice trembling.

“Oh, hopeful Rifle.  No more speaking.  And no more answers except for the things,” Leonard said.

Rifle looked at the ground and nodded.

Leonard reached out and caressed Rifle’s cheek with his thickly-gloved hand, then placed his hand on Rifle’s shoulder.  “If you want to be human in South Dakota, dear Rifle, then let’s talk about it.  You can be human, you know.  There is no law in South Dakota or in the Stranger’s gang against it.  But what we need here is perspective.”

He put his hand under Rifle’s chin and raised the chin so that their eyes met.

“Think of your life as a rod. At one end there is your birth.  Then, there is some blood.  Then your death at the other end,” Leonard said.  “So, Rifle, what am I to you then?”

“You are South Dakota,” Rifle said, closing his eyes.

“I am the rod, Rifle,” Leonard said.  “Everything is on it.  Your birth, death, all the blood, the man named Holland, the tents and the trains. Without me…” he brought his fingers together then pulled them apart, spreading them. “…poof, no more trains.  No more South Dakota.  No more you.”

“Yes, Leonard.”

“You see?”

“Yes, of course, Leonard.”

Leonard nodded.  “Good,” he said.  Then he gestured for all the Strangers to sit around the campfire that was now only smoke, because it had been urinated on.

“Let’s talk about this boy of Van Carlo’s,” he said.

Leonard and Fire spoke for a while, and the others, including Rifle, only listened.  They agreed that the boy was necessary, and that he was a very, very good boy.  If Van Carlo liked him so much, there must be something too him.

“And what about Dakota Inc.,” Fire said.  “They will want the boy, too, eventually.”

“Eventually,” Leonard scoffed. “They are imbeciles.  They would have asked us to take the boy in the first place, instead of the fat man, if they were not.  And they should have paid us more and we should have gone and left the fat man and taken the boy.  The boy, who used to be from Richmond but is now from Van Carlo; and those are the worst kinds of boys in South Dakota.”

“Rifle and I spent some time in Shadow, in secret,” Fire said.  “We heard some things about Van Carlo’s telegraph…Jason is his name.  He fought the blue soldiers during the War, even though he was only very young, just a boy.  He can ride and shoot well, and he can track.  He will go to the mountain if we give him time.  He will take the high ground, and it will be difficult to bring him down.”

Leonard’s eye began to bleed a little more.  It was a steady trickle now.

“There is no higher ground than my head in South Dakota,” he said.

There was a long pause at the campfire.  They all poked at the wet fire pit with sticks, except for Leonard and Rifle, who simply stared straight ahead.

“I will lead us to the mountain,” Rifle said, finally breaking the silence.

Leonard turned to look at Rifle, and Rifle thought he saw just a hint of uncertainty in the bleeding eye.  And suspicion.  The trickle of blood from the eye formed a little pool just underneath the eye, and this pool began to soak into the bandannas. Then Leonard blinked the eye over and over until it was all red.  This was a way that Leonard would scream sometimes.

Rifle stood.  “I am ready for the things,” he said, looking first at Fire, then at Leonard. “Then we can go and find this boy.  Even if he is on the top of the mountain, we’ll get him.”

“He won’t be like the fat man, Rifle,” Fire said, while Leonard looked on in interest.  “He can shoot, so it was said in Shadow, and he can track very…”

“He won’t be the one tracking,” Rifle interrupted, giving Fire a stern look.  “And so what if he can shoot?  We can all shoot.  It’s who shoots first that matters.”

“He will be able to see quite far up there,” Fire said, shaking his head.  “And you had trouble with the woman, Rifle.  What will happen at the top of the mountain where there are no walls and he can see all the way to the ocean?”

Leonard stood up and turned to face both men.  From somewhere underneath his long gray coat he pulled two rifles out and put one under the chin of each of the two men.  The rifles were like appendages to him, and the barrels were as cold as icicles.

“That’s enough,” he said.  “This boy, this new telegraph of Van Carlo’s is the worst kind of boy in South Dakota.  He’ll see nothing up there but South Dakota, and it will be as faceless as the walls and ceiling of his bedroom.”

He took the rifle from underneath Fire’s chin and placed it next to the one under Rifle’s chin.

“And you, Rifle,” he said.  “Your tongue is a wild horse. Fire is right. You had trouble controlling it for the woman.  What will you do when you face a boy who actually knows what he’s doing with a gun and a horse?  They say this boy has killed a blue soldier, even before he finished school.  You’ve never even killed a soldier, Rifle.”

Rifle did not reply.  He turned to look at his bedroll inside the tent, with the flap of tent still moving in and out like a tongue on the wind.  It was time for the things, and he wished he had something to dream about.  And then he remembered that he did.

“But we can help you, Rifle,” Leonard said.  “And I will let you track down this boy, even on the mountain, because I can help you.  But we cannot leave until after.”

“After, then,” Rifle said.

Then the rest of the Strangers came at him slowly with the sharp half of a broken horseshoe.  It was time for the things.  Two of the Strangers, Blanket and Fence, took him by his arms and led him to the tent.  Then they opened his bedroll, laid him down on it and began.  Rifle closed his eyes and started to dream about new things.

Leonard stared at the tent and saw Rifle’s boots sticking out of it.  He heard the men doing the things to Rifle.  He looked at Rifle’s boots, not with love, but something like it.  It was kind of like yearning….a yearning because Rifle was a very good boy, and could shoot and track very, very well, better than them all.

But then, Leonard thought about Van Carlo’s new telegraph.  What would happen if they found him on the mountain?  Perhaps he would prove to be a very good boy, too, if Van Carlo hadn’t brainwashed him fully.  And if he was a very good boy, then there might not be any more need of Rifle, and then Leonard could stop yearning.  He hated to yearn, anyway, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped.  And he hated that, too.

Deep down, Leonard hoped everything they said about this boy was true.  He hated Van Carlo, but he understood that the gambler had something of wisdom, and if Van Carlo liked the boy, then there was something to him.

This boy…what other rumors had he and Rifle heard about him?  Fire told him.  He could ride a horse well, with sharp movements, and up the sides of trees.

“Just like you, Leonard,” Fire said.  “I even heard that he killed that blue soldier with only a knife, while the soldier had a Spencer.”

He sounded like a good boy to Leonard.  As good as Van Carlo, even.

          “You’re not a very good gambler, Jason.” Van Carlo said.  It was early in the morning.  “I don’t think you’d ever make it on this side of the table.  Your family is starving, and you still don’t take any more from me than you did when you first started.”

            “I’m sorry,” the boy said, staring out the window of the casino.

            “And I’m angry about it.  Which is strange, I know.  I should be happy to have such a fool for a telegraph.  Maybe I’m the fool.”

Van Carlo turned away from the boy and looked at his chips.  He was on a break between games, and the other gamblers had stepped away from the table.

            “I don’t think you are a fool, Van Carlo” the boy said.  “You’re the only one who can look out this window and see things as they really are in South Dakota.”

            Van Carlo turned to look at the boy again.

“Boy, you are hard to read.  I look at your face, and all I see is nothing.  Maybe you would make a good gambler after all,” He paused for a moment.  The he said, “There is only one more thing you need.”

The boy looked out the window again, burying his head behind the velvet curtain. “What is that?”

            “To take more money. Until then, you are no gambler.  I don’t know what you are.”

“Mm,” the boy said. He was barely paying attention to Van Carlo’s words.

            Van Carlo shook his head.  “Dead.  Your family.  That’s what they are. At least they can claim it.  But you, I have no idea.  You come to work, but you don’t make any money.  You have a face fit for anything, but you do nothing with it.  Truly, you are a strange boy.”

            “Mm,” the boy said again.

            The boy turned to the side and the lethargic light from the window struck his face, making half of it gray and overcast.

‘He looks like a man today,’ Van Carlo thought.

The boy sighed and turned completely away from the window.  The velvet curtain fell across the panes and the streets of South Dakota were blacked out and only the dim of the casino remained.

“What’s going to happen to my family, Van Carlo?”

Van Carlo sighed.  “They are just a number in a book in some Company office in Shadow, Jason,” he said.  “That’s Dakota Inc.  You warned your father about them?”

“Yes.”

“Stuck in the drawer, he is,” Van Carlo said.  “I’m sorry.”

The boy nodded.  Then he didn’t say anything for a long time.

“What’s wrong?” Van Carlo said.

“I don’t want to say, Van Carlo.  You will think I am a fool.”

“I already think that,” he said.  “All boys are fools whose fathers are fools.”

“Then you know what’s happened to my father.”

“Yes. They have come and taken him away.  Now only your mother is left.  She has to be both your mother and your father now.”  He took a chip and spun it.  “It is a hard place to be in, especially in South Dakota.”

“Taken him away?” the boy asked.  “That’s not what I meant.  He is in bed, and he never leaves.”

Van Carlo looked very sad.  “No. They’ve taken him, and he is dead today.  So what I’m saying is…” he stood up and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “…to take more money.  It doesn’t matter anyway.  I don’t go anywhere to spend it.”

The boy turned away.  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

Van Carlo sat down and picked up his cards.  “You don’t have to believe me.  Pretty soon it will be time for you to get out of here, and then you’ll go home and see.  When the daylight has broken and the gray clouds are bright enough for you to see the road, you’ll see.  Just as sure as you saw the blue general that they said would never come.  Dakota Inc. does not hide such things.  They make them plain for all of us to see.”

“Then I prefer to wait until then,” the boy replied.

“Suit yourself.”

The boy looked at the empty seats across the table.  The other gamblers were still taking a break.

“I wish I could read faces so well…like you Van Carlo,” the boy said.

Van Carlo shrugged. “Don’t do this to yourself.  This was your father’s doing.  None of this is your fault.”

“Yes, Van Carlo.”

The boy arrived home early the next morning, just as the sun was rising.  Van Carlo had sent him on several long errands after their conversation the night before, and he was tired.

He didn’t skim for himself any of the money Van Carlo sent with him to buy things.  He still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with taking money from the gambler. He didn’t fully understand Van Carlo and it didn’t seem right to take money until he really knew who he was taking it from.  For the time being, he was content to listen to Van Carlo and to take the little money he gave him outright at the end of the night.

When the boy arrived back at the ranch house, he was eager to talk to someone about all of the things Van Carlo had told him. But he did not want to talk with father just yet.  He preferred mother, or even better, Lucy.  He wanted to see what Lucy thought, but he could not find her.  He could not find mother, either.  A note on the stove told him that they had left early that morning for Shadow and would not be back until later in the afternoon.

There was a smoldering fire in the fireplace in the living room, and the boy put a tin cup of water on some of the burning coals.  It was just a small, useless fire, not dangerous. It was barely hot enough to heat his water.

He put a little tea in the water after a while and sat in a chair near the window and began to drink it in unhurried sips.  He heard a shuffling in the bedroom and what sounded like the whisper of two men talking to each other. One of the voices sounded like father’s.  Then, after a moment, he realized the other voice was father’s, too.  Father was talking to himself in whispers.

The boy went to the back of the ranch house to his parents’ bedroom.  He found father standing with his ear against one of the thin walls.  There were cracks in the wall, especially around the windows, and the boy could feel a little of the cold wind of South Dakota on his cheeks as he entered the room.

“What are you doing, father?” the boy asked.

“Oh.  Jason.  You’re back from work.”  His father turned to him.  “How’s work going?”

“Fine.”  The boy sat down on the bed.  “Are you okay?”

Father smiled.  “Oh, yes.  I’m just listening to the wind.  South Dakota is really screaming out there today.”

The boy nodded.  “Yes, it is.  It screams down from the mountain.  I hear it on my way into Shadow, screaming in my ears.  It’s like that a lot around here.”

Father sat on the bed next to him.  “Yes, well.  We’ll get used to it.”

“We got used to the muskets.”

Father nodded.  “And the soldiers out in our streets, playing like children away from their parents.”

“Which ones?”

Father shrugged.  “Ah.  Who can remember anymore?  Blue ones, gray ones; I don’t know.  I think it was the blue ones.”

“You think so?”

“I remember thinking they looked fat in their uniforms,” father said. “Or maybe that was just my own refection in the window.”  He smiled thinly.

The boy smiled thinly, too.  Then he got up and went to the window and looked at the mountain in the distance.  He sipped his tea, but it was already cold, so he put it down on the window sill and left it alone.

“Maybe you should be listening to South Dakota through the walls of your shop, father.  Instead of the bedroom,” the boy said meekly.

Father’s smile faded quickly.

“I don’t like the shop, Jason.  It’s more comfortable here.”  He looked up.  “Though, it seems like this ceiling gets an inch or two lower every time I lie down on the bed and stare up at it.”

The boy looked up.  “It looks all right to me.”

“Yes, well…it isn’t.  And the ceiling in the shop is even lower.”  He shook his head.  “I have to duck to walk in there.  And I can’t hear the wind through the walls there; too many hats lining them.  It looks the same as the shop in Richmond.  I like it better here in the bedroom.”

“I don’t understand.  What’s wrong, father?”

Father shook his head.  “I just think that people are comfortable in their own hats.  They only see a stranger in a new one, when they look at themselves in my mirrors.”

The boy pressed his ear to the wall next to the window.

“Is South Dakota speaking to you?” father asked.

The boy listened for a moment longer.  “No,” he finally said.  “I just hear the wind, and feel it, too.”

Father nodded.  “Sometimes it speaks to me.”

“What does it say?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

The boy pressed his ear again.  There was only wind.  But there was a lot of it.

“Are you sure you are hearing the wind, father?  Or is it something else.”

“No, it’s the wind speaking.  And I’m listening closely.  I’ve got some thinking to do, it seems.”  He tapped his temple and winked.

“The wind told you that?”

“South Dakota told me that.”

The boy removed his ear from the wall. “I thought you said the wind spoke to you.”

Father shrugged.  “Same thing.”

There was a long pause between them.

“I think you should go to the shop today, father,” the boy said, finally.

Father stood up and went back to the wall, and pressed his ear against it.

“Not now, Jason,” he said.  Father listened to the wind for a very long time, and whispered to himself.

Jason watched him for a few minutes, then left.  But every so often he would go back to the bedroom and check on him.  One time as he stood in the doorway watching father, the wind blew so hard it rattled the window.  The boy felt the draft on his cheek from across the room.  Father seemed to enjoy the feel of the wind in the room.  He stood there caressing the glass of the window and smiling a smile that reminded the boy of his dead aunt in her coffin.

The boy started to say something about the cold, but then he didn’t.  It didn’t matter.  He turned to go, but then father spoke to him, and he stopped.

“I think I’m going to sell the shop, Jason,” he said, still caressing the window, his ear still against the wall.

The boy nodded, but his eyes were wary.

“To whom?”

“They call themselves Dakota Inc.  They have their business in Shadow.”

“What kind of business?”

Father turned away from the wall and looked at the boy.

“The helping kind.”

“Who do they help, father?”

“People.  People like us.”

“You mean people from the East.  People from Richmond, not their own kind,” the boy said with suspicion.

“People from away, yes, Jason.”  Father went to sit on the bed with his back to the boy.

“They are, um…sympathetic to our situation.”

The boy walked over and stood in front of father. His boots made a hard, cold sound on the floor, and for the first time that morning the boy realized that except for the wind, he had noticed no other sounds in the house.

“Sympathetic?”

“That’s right.”

“About our situation?”

“Yes.”

“When did you talk about our situation with these men?”

Father shrugged. “I didn’t.  They knew much about us, though.  Our names, how much I had spent on the business, how much stock I had invested, our lack of savings, where we lived, how in debt we are…all down to the number.”

The boy did not speak for a moment.  He turned and looked out the window, then back to father.

“Do you want me to make you some coffee?” the boy asked.

“No.  I’m not thirsty.”

“Are you cold.”
“No.”

“I will go have some coffee, if that’s okay.”

“Fine,” Father said.  “I’m going to lie down for a while.”

            The boy went to make some coffee in the dying fire in the fireplace.  When he returned to the bedroom, he found father under the covers and rolled to one side.  His unpolished boots were on the floor pushed neatly together at the end of the bed.

            “I have heard of these men, Dakota Inc.,” the boy said, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. “I have heard about them.  I have seen them, too.  They are always out, whether it’s early in the morning or late at night, or if it’s clear or raining.  They are always on the streets. They have eyes like fish that never blink.  They always carry a lot of guns.  Three apiece, I think.  Seems a strange way to run a business, being out in the street all the time.  More like the soldiers in Richmond than businessmen.”

            Father sat up in bed and rubbed his face.  Then he looked at Jason.

            “We put our guns away in Richmond because our cause was lost.  Maybe theirs isn’t.  I don’t know.  But I do know that I have made up my mind.”

            “Father, I don’t think they understand Richmond, or us.  I’m not even sure they understand South Dakota.  Maybe we should talk to someone who does.”

            “Like who?”

            “Like Van…” he stopped, remembering Van Carlo’s admonition to not tell his father he had said anything about Dakota Inc.  But it was too late.  His father knew.

            “Van Carlo.  The gambler?”  Father did not look pleased.

            “Why not?  He’s lived here for many years.  He knows this place, and he knows Dakota Inc.  He says to stay away from them.”

            “He knows how to take a fool’s money, is all,” Father said.  “And maybe I am a fool.  But I’d rather give my shop to Dakota Inc.”

            “But Van Carlo says…”

            “Your friend Van Carlo speaks a lot of words for a gambler,” Father said, waggling a finger angrily at the boy. “Stray words cost a gambler money, I know that much.  And either he doesn’t know this and is a fool or he does and is an imbecile.”

            The boy stood up.  “That’s not true, father!  Van Carlo…”

            “You are a dullard, boy, with an imagination like a jar of grease.  You believe in the perspective of a man who has been sitting in one place so long that he can’t tell his body from his own chair?”

            “He’s not like that, father,” the boy said.  He sat back in the chair and hung his head.

            “How dare he judge men in the saddle when all he does is sit around all day.  Tell me, Jason, does Van Carlo’s chair take feed?  Is it in need of a grooming now and then, or a soft stable and a fresh drink of water?” He lay back down in the bed.  “Van Carlo is a fool and his employer is sloth.”

            The boy shook his head.  “Van Carlo’s job is to read faces.  And he knows the faces of Dakota Inc., and you should have nothing to do with them.”

            Father sighed, and the boy could see the condensation from his breath rise from his mouth and then quickly dissipate into the draft in the room.

            “If you weren’t practically a grown man, I’d strike your bottom, boy, like I used to,” he said. “But you are a man. Though no less a dullard, that is obvious.”

            “I’m sorry, father.  I didn’t mean to make you angry.”  The boy pulled his hat low over his eyes.

            “You used to be such quiet boy, but South Dakota has given you a big mouth.  Go spend some time against the wall over there, and leave me alone.”

            “Yes, father.”

            There was quiet between them for a long time.  Father’s breathing became regular and the boy realized he was asleep.  The boy put his empty tin cup of coffee on the floor and stood.  He put his ear to the wall and his hand on the window and listened to the wind outside, and felt the cold wind on his cheek, and his fingers became numb against the window.

After a moment, he heard the thrumming of horses in the distance.  Father sat up in bed slowly and slung his legs over the side.  He rubbed his face and looked at the boy.

            “They are here,” he said.  “Hand me my boots.”

            The boy’s face went white and he pulled his ear quickly from the wall and took his hand off the window as though the window had been a hot stove.  He looked at father for a moment, then went over and picked up his father’s boots and handed them to him.

            “Who’s here?” the boy asked.

            “Dakota Inc.”

            Father stood up and brushed his wispy gray hair back.  He bent over and pulled his boots on, and then he pulled up his suspenders over his shoulders with his thumbs.

            “What do you want me to do?” the boy asked.

            “You might as well come to the door with me,” father said.  “They know you are here.”

            Jason followed father out of the bedroom.

“Just make sure you stand behind me,” father said, opening the front door.  The men were approaching, just three black dots beyond the fence in the distance, getting larger.

They came up the road, which blended in so well with the rough and patchy land around it that you could hardly tell there was a road there at all. Or maybe all of it was a road, and there was no land.

They looked like very hard men, the boy thought to himself, when the men finally arrived at the ranch house.  No sense of humor to them.  No smiles.  Lots of teeth, yes; but no smiles.  They looked like black statues on their horses, and they stayed on their horses the entire time. The boy and father stood in the doorway, the men and their horses stood in front of them.

            Father spoke and the boy stood behind him in the doorway and said nothing.  He just stood there and kept his face very still, just like he did when he was working for Van Carlo at the casino.

            The icy sun was behind the men from Dakota Inc. and their shadows fell forward.  One of the men moved his head and the shadow of his very wide hat fell upon the boy’s hand in the doorway.  The boy pulled it away quickly, instinctively, as if pulling it away from a flame.  He drew back a little into the house.

            The men stood in a line, their horses only inches apart from each other.  They were wearing black suits of fine cloth, which had many extra shining things hanging from them.  They all had guns, three apiece.  Two pistols which they wore high at their sides in shoulder holsters, almost heart-level, and a rifle, which was in a long, leather holster and stuck out of the back of their saddles, making the horses look like they had a horn coming out of their backs.

            Both the men and the horses seemed unhurried and calm to an unnatural degree. They looked like men who had utterly no concerns.  Other people had problems, but not these men.  Their problems had become other people’s problems a long time ago.  They were men who were able to look out at a crazy world and realize that none of the craziness had anything to do with them.  They were not even themselves.  Everything about them, from their shoes, to their faces, to the guns at their waists, all belonged to other men. They could never be wrong. They could never be right.  They could never be anything that wasn’t passed off to the world with a shrug.

            When the three men spoke, they spoke together, so that the words came out in one heavy, layered voice.  Their words were not meant to be disputed.  They asked for no advice.  They invited no questions.

            It was very simple, the men said.  They would loan father a certain amount of money to keep the shop going.  In return, he would pay them a monthly amount and interest, as well as a percentage of the profits.  Payment had to be made at the end of every month, except for the first month, which the men said he did not have to pay.  It was a grace period.  After that, under no circumstances could the payment be deferred.

            There was no better deal to be found anywhere east of Richmond, the men told father.  If father didn’t believe them, they invited him to go to Shadow and ask around.  He would see that many other proprietors had made the same deal with Dakota Inc., and they were all doing quite well.

            “Will you send people to come buy my hats,” father asked.

            “We will try to send them,” one of the men said. “But this is not Richmond, and it is certainly not Richmond before the war, as you were accustomed to it.  We, unlike your old country, cannot force men to do things they do not wish to do.”

            “Well, I hope they come then,” father said with a sigh.

            “You do indeed hope, and you will have plenty of that in time, slave owner,” one of the men said.  “You refugees from the east are rich in hope.  But money works better in South Dakota.”

            “I did not own slaves,” father said.

            “No?  Sold them, perhaps?” the man in the middle said, tightening the black gloves on his fingers by pulling at them at his wrists and looking disinterested.

            “So, do we have an agreement, Mr. Credence?” another man asked.

            Father nodded.  He reached out his hand, but the men from Dakota Inc. did not return the gesture.

            “That will do,” one of the men said, turning to the boy hiding in the doorway.  “Don’t you think so, boy?”

            The boy was looking at the ground, and pulling slowly back into the house like turtle into its shell.  At the mention of his name, he looked up, and then nodded slowly.

            “Obliged,” the men said, tipping their hats.  Then they turned and rode off.

            “What do you think it would be like to fight them, father?” the boy asked, watching the men ride past the fence.

            His father sighed and turned to go back into the house.

            “Like they said, this is not Richmond.  But if that’s what you want, then you do it.”

Father disappeared into the dimness of the house, but the boy kept on staring out the front door until the men from Dakota Inc. disappeared beneath the horizon.

Father went to lie down in his bed.  Two days later, he still hadn’t gotten out of bed, and the boy and Lucy and mother realized he never would.

***

The weeks went by and the cold of December became even colder in January.  Christmas was a ghost, and noiselessly slipped by.

During the winter, Lucy developed a cough.  There was no money to pay for her to go see the doctor in town, and the doctor wouldn’t have seen her anyway because father was late on his payments to Dakota Inc.  The doctor did not see patients who were late on their payments to the Company.

No longer just a clearing of her throat several times a day, the cough soon became something of an inseparable part of Lucy’s personality; like a second language to her.  It frightened the family, especially mother, who knew the sound of that particular cough.  She had heard it from some of the gray soldiers during the winters in Richmond, before the blue general put an end to the war once and for all.  It was a cough that went beyond life and body.

***

One night, the boy was in his drafty bedroom, lying on his bed.  He stared up at the gray moon through the hole in the ceiling.  The moon looked ill.  Sick moon, he thought.  Sick like Lucy.  The wispy clouds galloped around it like ghoulish horses on a haunted merry-go-round.

The boy found himself missing Richmond.  He turned and looked at the candle on the table next to his bed and he remembered something Lucy said.  She said that Richmond, when looked at from South Dakota, or from any great distance during the war must have flickered gently and gracefully like the flame of a candle.  It was pretty, even endearing somehow from that distance.  But up close it was a nightmare:  cannon balls falling on houses; houses falling on houses; horses with shiny, bristling soldiers trampling houses.  But still, they boy missed it.

Father’s shop in Shadow was now gone, taken by the Company men who called themselves Dakota Inc., and father, for all practical purposes was gone, too.  He just stayed in his bed all day, not eating, and taking only a little water.  Mumbling something about a play he was hoping to write.  Richmond, he’d say.  He’d only ever wanted to write about Richmond.  And one day while sitting by his father’s side, the boy shoved a pencil and paper under his father’s nose as the old man lay covered in the bed.  “Write!” the boy screamed.  “If you want to write something of Richmond, write it then,” he screamed.

But father refused.  “Richmond doesn’t sell anymore,” he said, and rolled over.

As the boy lay on his bed staring at the moon through the hole in the ceiling, the clouds drifted away from it, the ghoulish horses galloping off in single file.  And then there was only the moon.

If this moon, this South Dakota moon could talk, what would it say to him, the boy wondered.  And would he be able to understand it?  After all, he was just a dullard, with an imagination like a musket spiked into the ground.