Unbury Carol(13)

Unable to deny the thrill of it, Cadge laughed again. And the thought of the ebullient messenger on his way, the kid who sat slumped on the front porch for weeks at a time, waiting for the chance to meet Moxie—well, it made Cadge laugh even harder.

For the messenger, the feeling was near overwhelming. He was a young man who used to travel the Trail himself, before the horrors out there had him rethinking his life’s path. He’d spent nights beneath the birch and maple and wondered if Moxie had done the same. He’d sometimes slept at the mossy lip of a green pond, sleeping through the celebratory sounds of the nearest town: gleeful revelry twanging through the tree-walls of the Trail as if the route were a tunnel…a wire…a tube by which messages and moods were sent by hoof and heel. But just as some kids went screaming back into the house when their parents told them scary stories out by the fire, the messenger had run from the Trail, unable to shoulder all the dark weight.

Yet what a wonderful feeling the messenger had now! He’d dodged the bigger trouble of the Trail, settled in Mackatoon, and was currently riding to James Moxie’s house. A man he would’ve paid dearly to have met years ago.

Oh, how he wanted to know the contents of the telegram!

The horse’s heavy hooves pounded the dirt, and the messenger’s heart beat in sync. Yes, he was overwhelmed. His own personal imagining of the Trick in Abberstown played over and over in his frazzled head. Moxie on one end of the big pit. Daniel Prouds on the other. A high, blinding sun. The call for draw and Prouds’s chest exploding red before Moxie even…

“…before Moxie even pulled his gun.”

The messenger howled delight into the morning sky.

Things were certainly hyperbolic now: The rays boring the summer clouds were alarmingly clean and bright; dirt motes came to living life by the hooves of the horse; the trees formed a presidential, a regal path to the outlaw. The fresh morning air filled his young lungs entire—air that blew over the roof and along the walls and windows of James Moxie’s house; weaving serpentine through his garden of tomatoes and onions (or so the kid had heard); splitting the wood gate at the head of his property (or so the kid had heard); and traveling the small neat dirt walk to where he, the messenger, rode.

It was an exciting moment indeed, breathing the air James Moxie breathed, living the same day as him.

“I’m gonna ask him how he did it,” the messenger said, bringing a hand to the folded telegram in his vest pocket. “It would be a pig-sin not to.”

Then the messenger gasped as the trees split and a wood gate (it was true!) came into view. Then a garden followed (it, too, was true!), and finally…

“Hell’s heaven,” the messenger said. “It’s his house.”

This home, he thought, a bit disappointed, was no more magical than the one he himself was reared in.

And yet perhaps some magic.

James Moxie was standing against a wooden beam, sure as pig-shit, right there, drying his hands with a cloth, staring at the young rider approaching.

The messenger’s body went cold rigid.

Did he know I was coming? Could he have?

The messenger gulped.

Magic, he thought.

It was a frightening ride to the gate, a tense one, and very different from how the messenger believed it would go. He’d always imagined he’d tie the horse to a hitching post and climb the mythic steps of a regal homestead adorned with gold knockers, mist, impossible unnamed creatures on the lawn.

But this was no different from delivering a telegram to Missus Henderson, Mackatoon’s prized log-chopper.

The outlaw was as still as the post he leaned on. He wore no smile, gave no greeting, showed no expression at all. His red buttoned-up shirt had the messenger imagining the outlaw covered in blood, carrying so many years of it with him wherever he stood. His tan hat hid his eyes.

“Hello!” the messenger called without confidence. He raised a hand and waved. Moxie continued to dry his hands but did not respond.

At the wood gate the messenger stopped the horse and expected a reaction, a word. But nothing came.

Silent, he brought a hand to his vest pocket and removed the folded telegram. He held it up under the early-morning summer sun.

“I have a telegram for one James Moxie. Is that you, sir? I mean to say, of course it’s you. I came as fast as I could.”

“Not on that thing you didn’t.”

These were the first words the outlaw said to him, and at first the messenger didn’t know what they meant. Then he looked down at the horse’s back and smiled.

“Ha, yes, she’s not in too good a shape.”

Moxie stepped slowly from the beam.

The messenger dismounted and looped the harness to the farthest fence post. He lifted a small latch on the wood gate and let himself in. It was a powerful feeling, stepping foot on this man’s property, simple and regular as it was. The garden came to life to his right. And the brim of the old man’s hat shielded his face from the sun.

The messenger wanted to see those eyes. He knew well that James Moxie was close to forty years old, more than double his own age. What did forty years of burning fire look like, trapped in a man’s eyes?

“Mister Cadge said it was pretty urgent.”

As the messenger approached, the angles of the shadows changed and Moxie’s face was revealed.

Hell’s heaven, the messenger thought. He doesn’t look all that different from any man.