We Begin at the End(62)

As she turned to head back up she heard it.

Movement on the porch. Maybe the swing of the seat, the chains loud no matter how much Hal oiled them. She ducked low, her heart again, racing away from her.

She fumbled for the drawer, found a decent-length knife and gripped it tight. She crept to the door, saw it open a little as moonlight fell onto her bare feet.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Shit. I was about ready to kill you.”

“That’s a bread knife,” Hal said.

He sat on the swing, reduced to the glow of his cigar, though as she neared she saw the shotgun by his feet.

“You believed me then,” she said.

“Maybe I’m just waiting on a bear.”

“I should’ve got the plates. I picked up the gun and forgot everything else. Fucking rookie.” She spit the words, mouth tight.

“You were protecting your family, not many people brave enough to do that.”

She shook her head. “Does Dolly know?”

After Hal had gently taken the gun from her Dolly had appeared and led her into the safety of the diner beside.

“She’s tough. Thought it’d do good to have another set of eyes out there. She asks after you, every time I see her. I think maybe you remind her a little of her younger self.”

“Why?”

“Dolly’s about the toughest lady you’ll ever meet. She had it rough, she doesn’t tell any of it. Her Bill, though, I was drinking with him one time. Dolly’s father, he was mean. He caught her smoking once.”

“And gave her a hiding.”

“No. He burned her with it. She’s still got the scars on her arms. He told her she’d never have the guts to light one up again.”

Duchess swallowed. “What happened to him?”

“She got older and he put his hands … He went to prison.”

“Oh.”

Hal coughed. “She dressed different back then, I saw photos. She wore boys’ clothes, shapeless, baggy, but he still came.”

“Some people are all dark.”

“They are.”

“James Miller, paid assassin and gunslinger. He went to church regular, didn’t drink or smoke. But rumor was he killed fifty. A mob lynched him. You know what his last words were?”

“Tell me.”

“Let ’er rip.”

“The mob got it right then. If the good stand by idle, are they still good?”

It was starry enough for snow. Hal said winter had not touched them yet, that when it did they’d know it so well they’d forget the colors of fall.

He scooted over.

She did not sit.

They stayed in silence for a long time. When he finished his cigar he lit another.

“The cancer will get you.”

“It might.”

“Not that I care.”

“Of course not.”

Darkness hid his eyes. He watched out, trees and water and the nothing that was slowly becoming something to her.

He stood and walked into the kitchen and she heard the whistle of the kettle.

She took a seat at the far end of the bench and eyed the shotgun.

He returned with cocoa and set her cup down on the porch beside her. Soft light from the kitchen showed marshmallow in hers.

He sipped whisky, a small measure. “There was a storm once. Bad one. I sat right here and watched lightning cross our land. I thought about the devil, I saw his face in the sky, serpent tongue lashing out like that. The barn burned.”

She had seen an acre out where nothing grew, just the soot shape of what had once stood.

“The gray. Her mother was in there.”

Duchess looked over at him, grateful for the dark so that he could not see the panic in her eyes.

“I couldn’t get her out.”

She breathed in that moment, knew well about the haunt of memory.

“We had storms sometimes,” she said. “Back home.”

“I think of Cape Haven often. I prayed for your mother, for you and Robin.”

“You don’t believe in God.”

“Neither do you, but I know you go to the clearing and you kneel.”

“Just a place to think.”

“Everyone needs one. The storeroom, the guns, that’s where I go to mull things. I sit down there and I shut out the world and I focus on what matters.” He glanced over. “I wrote to him.”

“Who?”

“Vincent King. Over the years I wrote him letter after letter. And I’m not a writer.”

“Why?”

He blew smoke toward the moon. “That’s a big question.”

She rubbed her eyes.

“You should go to bed.”

“My sleep patterns are none of your concern.”

He set his glass down. “At first I wasn’t going to send them. Just, after Sissy, and then all that happened with your mother and your grandmother. I wanted an outlet, maybe. But then I thought why shouldn’t he know. Maybe he thought he’d ruined his life. I wanted him to know about ours. Maybe he had a vision of me, retired here, sitting on beautiful acres. I told him about the work, about the debt, the bills and living under that kind of weight.”

“Did he write back?”

“He did. At first it was all sorrow. I know it was an accident … I do know that. But that doesn’t really mean anything.”