Unbury Carol(23)

I mean a great deal, the stranger said. More than we have time to discuss.

Please, tell me what you mean.

Because Moxie needed to know. Moxie needed to make a decision.

Then the stranger said something that Moxie would never forget no matter how many fresh memories were made.

Your mind is already made up.

He had to say something in return. Had to refute this. But even then Moxie knew it was true.

You know the workings of my mind?

Here the stranger laughed. Things rippled then in the bar not unlike the way they would ripple twenty years later on the Trail.

Carol, the stranger said. Do you hear her name? Carol. I’ve said it again. And how does it make you feel? What’s not the feeling that settles, but the feeling that comes first?

Moxie, ambushed by this direct talk, stared blankly into the bottles behind the bar. The stranger went on.

You can’t care for her, Moxie. No man can. This woman asks too much…she is too much…

The words felt heavy, ugly, mean.

It’s not her fault.

No, it never is.

It’s not her—

In your more lucid moments, Moxie, fault means nothing to you. She exists, James Moxie, and she exists for you in this way…this terribly demanding, clumsy way…

Moxie looked up suddenly to the barkeep.

Get another, the stranger said. Get two.

Moxie, drunk, scared, young, ordered two more.

The drinks came quick, and he slowly slid one toward the stranger. Moxie raised his glass and saw a wrinkled hand raise the other.

Now, the stranger said, we cheer.

Beyond them, outside them, loud voices cried, women cackled, glasses came down upon wood.

Moxie felt his glass touch the stranger’s and in that moment, in the briefest illumination, a break in the shadows and smoke showed him the man’s face.

Moxie gasped.

Who are you? Moxie, not yet legend, was scared.

The stranger laughed. It seemed to come from every booth, every corner of the tavern.

Drink. Drink and I’ll show you.

Moxie closed his eyes. The whiskey went down harsh. His chest burned. When he opened his eyes, the stranger was closer.

I’m the guilty thought you have of leaving the one you love. I’m the twisting in your heart. I’m the sour end of things, the brittle finish when all hope of recovery has been swallowed by the snouts of the pigs.

The tavern door opened to allow another patron in, and Moxie saw rain falling from the darkened sky. He slurred as he spoke.

I don’t understand.

A glass broke in a corner booth and Moxie looked, and when he looked back he saw the stranger was closer yet.

I am present when things fall apart.

The stranger’s lips weren’t moving. Moxie tried to tell himself it was the whiskey. Despite the proximity, he couldn’t get a read on the man’s face. As if the man had many faces at once.

I am the stranger at the funeral. The one all mourners say belongs to someone else.

He held Moxie’s blurred gaze. His own was still as the face in a dark oil portrait. His lips did not move.

I am Rot, James Moxie. I am the moment after you’ve decided to leave the one you love. I’m a step beyond guilt. After the feeling has turned black. Once the mold sets in.

Laughter. All throughout the tavern.

Moxie felt a gust of cold air as another man stumbled through the door, arm over the shoulders of a thin woman.

Moxie, breathing hard, did not want to look back at the face of the stranger.

Were it not for death, I would hardly exist.

The stranger laughed again. Then laughter erupted forth from every booth, every shadow. Even the barkeep broke free with it. And still the stranger’s face remained expressionless. An oil portrait, yes, an uneasy rendering, the sort of painting children stepped quickly past in the second-story halls of their homes.

A gray cloud appeared behind the stranger as smoke rose from the open laughing mouths of the other patrons.

Moxie suddenly felt very young. Too young. How old was this stranger? It was true that Moxie had come to Portsoothe to get far from Carol, from her condition. It had become too much: the regularity with which she collapsed, falling into her death-trance slumber; no pulse, no beat, no breath. And here this stranger knew the workings of his heart. He called himself Rot. In Moxie’s blurriness he wondered if his love was, indeed, rotting. This man…this thing…this—

You’re a monster, he said.

Hearing it, he believed it.

James Moxie! the stranger said, his mouth moving at last. What a mean thing to say!

Now, riding the Trail for the first time in nine years, Moxie did not attribute these memories to the shape he’d seen against the tree in the shadows. No connection was made there at all. Yet Moxie knew well the shudders. The guilt he felt for his decision in Portsoothe was a bigger picture than the shadowed portrait he vaguely remembered and could not describe: the face that seemed not to talk when it talked…the mouth that seemed not to laugh when it did.

What was it we cheered? he thought, glancing up now at the wider breadth of sunlight descending. But he wasn’t sure they had cheered anything at all.

James Moxie! the stranger had said. What a mean thing to say!

Yet Moxie remembered the words that followed the hazy toast.

I’m no more a monster than a fox is…let loose in the chicken pen…its snout red with fowl blood…its feet wet with eggshells and the smashed bodies of baby chicks yet to see the moon. I’m no more a monster than the man who finds the fox and holds him by his neck to the tree stump where he wields his ax and severs the snout that robbed him. I’m no more a monster than the hiccup in the same man’s chest as he bends to lift a box from the cellar stairs, a box to carry the dead chickens. And I’m no more a monster than the water pooled at the bottom of the same cellar stairs down which the man falls…his final face wet and distorted with hate, with pain, and with surprise. In truth, I’m much more like the wife who finds him there and cleans the tragic mess. You see…there are worse things on the Trail than the men and women who steal, punish, and brutalize. And I’m not the only one.