Unbury Carol(14)

A strong nose. A strong chin. Dark eyebrows floating above…unexceptional eyes.

Moxie held out his hand.

The messenger handed the folded paper to him. Then said, “How’d you do it? How’d you do the Trick in Abberstown?”

Moxie took the telegram. He unfolded the paper.

The messenger laughed nervously.

“I’m sorry to have asked,” the messenger said. “It’s just…you understand…your story is the best…the best the Trail has ever seen.”

The outlaw glanced down at the message. Now, from this angle, he looked every bit the legend he was. His eyes seemed to generate heat as they read. His lips formed a perfect ruler across his face. The messenger was certainly satisfied with this. And beyond Moxie, inside the home, the messenger saw a blue owlfly in a yellowed jar resting on a small table.

Moxie, finished, set the telegram on the porch-fence rail and looked blankly beyond the garden, the horse, the town.

“You need I should return with a message then?”

Moxie did not respond. A small wind came and teetered the folded paper.

“The operator said it was something urgent, you need I—”

Moxie looked the kid in the face now and the kid saw something terrible there: the coming launch, perhaps, the legend about to perform.

“I’ll need to get my things together,” Moxie suddenly said. But not to the messenger. Not to anybody at all.

“Sure, sure. You need my help?”

Absently, it seemed, Moxie turned and stepped inside. His boots clacked hard against the porch, then the floorboards within.

The wind came again and rocked the folded paper. The messenger grabbed it and read:


James Moxie Sir

Carol Evers dead STOP Condition got the best of her STOP As beautiful in death as in life STOP Funeral in two days STOP Harrows STOP Understand you knew her STOP

Missus Farrah Darrow



The messenger barely had time to read the last name before he saw a flash of the red shirt and Moxie was there, before him, above him.

“I’m sorry, Mister Moxie, I just—”

Moxie brought forth a new folded paper. “Send this back to the same address.”

The messenger looked to the paper then back up at the outlaw then back to the paper before fully understanding that Moxie was answering the telegram.

“You read it,” the outlaw said.

The messenger was frightened. “No…no…I…it…the wind—”

“It said two days. Two days from now. Not from yesterday?”

“No, sir. Two days from now.”

Moxie leaned forward, his face as serious as any the kid ever saw. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Yes, sir. I’m sure. The message came in just—”

Moxie stepped back inside.

The messenger watched him come out with a green sack.

“I’ll be, James Moxie! Are you leaving then?”

Moxie didn’t respond.

Condition got the best of her

“Maybe we’re going the same way?”

Moxie vanished into the house again.

“I sure hope I didn’t upset you! Hell’s heaven, I didn’t mean to do that!”

But talk as the messenger might, James Moxie didn’t hear these anxious words; his mind was long elsewhere, twenty years elsewhere, in a time when Carol and he were safe from memories; before they had made them. Painfully, Moxie was inside those days again, walking with Carol through a white winter; Carol’s fair brown hair pressed behind her ears, her teeth that showed in her smile, her smile that exposed a brilliant mind, a mind that worried, in those days, about a condition the doctors were telling her was getting worse.

Quickly he stepped outside. He crossed the yard, past the well, and reached the stables. Hanging inside was a full sack of feed, and Moxie brought it out. He held it above the trough and watched it spill, filling it entirely.

This was for the horses he wasn’t going to ride.

Two days, Moxie thought. And just then two days felt like enough time.

Crossing the yard again, he was at the well and filled the bucket and carried it to the stables. He moved in a pattern; routine deeds performed by a body no longer tied to the mind. He opened the gate to the pen and took his best mare by the muzzle.

She was old, but she had what Moxie needed right now.

Endurance.

Moxie led the mare around the house, tied her to the front porch, and went in through the front door.

The blue owlfly was gone. Moxie noticed this without making a big show of it, and he understood the messenger had stolen it. With its oily, shining blue wings, it was the only thing with any color in the whole house. The first thing that would have caught the eye of a fool-messenger looking for a souvenir.

Thief.

Moxie went into the bedroom again and came forth with some bedding and a hoof pick. He carried the stuff outside, picked up the green sack, and brought it all to the mare.

Slung over the east post, the saddle looked worn but ready.

Pig-shit thief.

He rolled the bedding and tied it tight to the saddle, the saddle tight to the mare.

One last time he went inside.

Hog-swilling pig-shit thief.

Moxie grabbed some bread from the kitchen and filled a pouch with some water from the pitcher. He looked once more around his small home and left it.