Evening Redness - by Jack Stacey
It was the screaming she could remember. A coyote perhaps. It wailed nastier than she’d ever heard, scared her blood cold. This didn’t wake her father. He had the fever, spent all night shivering by that wood fire. She had to wait on him those nights. This man taught her what he knows - self-reliance. She knew her way round the handgun before she began speaking. He’d have shown her the rifle sooner were it not for those small hands of hers, but he made sure she was adept when the time came. Many quale hunts they went on. She’d be watching her father take down almost anything flying or any deer or wolf that filed through daylight and darkness. He showed patience, yet was quick firing off shots. It was true she was good at firing herself from a young age, more so than most boys. Her father, wide he was - not so much fat, but a big man - he could see a hustle, a no-good gang heading for a shootout a mile away. He was like the Sherriff’s right-hand man, but laid no claim to such position or any other. He was just an honourable man.
It was this night she’d investigate such sounds, fearless as ever. Her father sound asleep like God allowed him to finally trust his offspring. She always had her gun. The grass stood tall, like reeds edging from a marsh, every strand entangled her small feet as she crept through the darkness. The impending commotion came in waves, and every cry tethered into a whimper. It did little to sway her interest. It was like some long dream you get and you wait to discover the answer, but you wake up just before. She did not want to wake up, just had to go on a little further with every scream. She knew the smell of blood – unmistakable like the stench of rusted metal, and this was it. This girl quickly learned a strong stomach since her father taught how to claim her first pelt, and she watched the process, the technique this man possessed. He made it like an art. This girl became all too familiar with the skinning of an animal, be that a bear or a horse. Whatever it was was right there, behind some hedge like it once tried to crawl away. Too small to be a bear, too human to make those sounds. This person lay castrated. His hair was gone, this child was none too familiar with seeing a scalped human, bared for the moon to see. The blood was black and shined something bright. He lay still, twitching, no sound. The red all soaked up by the grass and sat like oil under the girl’s shoes. His face on the girl’s. They just stared. Looked straight through her eyes like he was staring at an angry god. She hadn’t the notion of human mortality, she just knew how to deal with a mortally wounded animal. The girl sat by this lifeless body waiting for the Lord to take him, her bottoms soaking in his blood. They watched each other a while longer before she pulled the trigger. Killed her first man that night. Her father still asleep. He stepped aside. God made her go this one alone.
***
Three years it had been since her dad ended up in Boot Hill cemetery. A girl so young paying the furniture man to build a coffin her father’s size. When she woke, she struggled to clear her face from the morning light that overfed her vision and searched for the canister of water. A burning pain met her left eyelid - a fierce backhand two days earlier. A fresh assault from some man her father would’ve shot down twice-over for even smiling at any daughter of his. He left a swollen, purple shiner that bounced from the sunlight. The girl reached over for the water and took a mouthful, pouring its worth down her throat. The fire, still dim, gently smoked the sky. The morning light bore a gentle breeze through the girl’s stringy hair, last night’s fire had blackened the tips of her fingers, and left her face looking like it had never met water. She searched across the prairie. Her working eye could see a distant shrub evergreen where deer were free, leaping amongst the trees, and there were birds hopping around. Everything care-free.
The four horses were still bound, unattended. There were three gentlemen, mid-thirties with sun-scorched skin like soft leather. They huddled by the fire, each curled like infants fast asleep. The girl used the nearby latrine she dug out the previous night and tended to the horses after. Maybe an hour or so later, she rekindled the fire, and sat for a while. It wasn’t long until one of them woke.
George Curry was the first, he looked around for the canister the same way she did, only he wasn’t shy of hocking up spit to launch at the flames she made. Curry took his mouthful, rinsing some on his face. The girl remained still, staring at the fire as the other two slept. Curry acknowledged the girl with a wry grin, and launched a mouthful of spit, no more than he could bear so early. He hauled himself to his feet, raising his hat atop his head. He had a great size to him. A face normally kept clean was growing stubble like a thousand sharp edges. The hair on his head was long but never untidy. He looked back at the girl who remained quiet. Curry reached the near-empty bottle of whisky, and finished it in one mouthful. The girl looked towards him, meeting his eyes as he began striking a match for his cigar. He smoked his cigar and studied the girl.
‘You don’t say much, do ye?’
The man pulled out his cigar and poked it into the girl’s mouth. The girl gently exhaled, trying not to cough, like it wasn’t her first time.
‘You won’t like it, but what else you got around here?’
‘I like the smell,’ she said.
‘Well shit, you can talk.’
Curry hitched himself by the girl, and stared at the fire. Always carrying his wry grin.
‘What time do you make it?’ she asked.
‘You see them deer out yonder? That means early. Why, they don’t go running round when these guys are even half-awake.’
The girl wiped her nose clean, swigging more water. She needn’t much conversation at the best of times.
‘The matter? Don’t you like me, girl? You got a name, or should I just keep calling you darlin’ and wait to get shot. Yeah, I see you eyeing up my holster. I like me a youngster who knows more than how to fart in the wind. I bet you can even read, can’t ye?’
George Curry stood up and pulled his braces over each shoulder before putting on a grey duster. The girl looked again in his direction. She noticed his attire, the yellow dirt across his long coat, the pointed tips of his boots; the length that exceeded two-times past her own. Curry looked at her with a wry smile as a cigar sat in the corner of his mouth. He bellowed smoke in the air as he spoke. His mouth made little movements, like it didn’t need many, like the words themselves were destined for his choosing, yet he was a man who’d probably steal, or kill for them just so he could say them first.
‘You aint no lady. And I sure hope you keep it that way, sweet girl.’ He nodded his hat to her, and turned to kick one of the two sleepers. ‘Get up,’ he said. Curry bent over to him. ‘See that girl there lately? See that pretty face of hers? You ever touch her without my sayin’ so and I’ll slap you twice as hard, y’all understand? Get your ass up.’ The girl kept a despondent gaze on Curry, who never once looked round for approval.
It was how it went for a few months. A girl who was taught many things from a young age, brought into a world where even priests would see temptation like a buzzard spotting a near-rotting corpse. There were two other men, one a burnt-out Mexican. No one knew his name, not even himself. They just called him ‘the Chief’ for he was once accused of stealing a sheriff’s horse. A story that thin and simple, probably invented by George Curry for his own amusement. The other man was William ‘Bill’ Younger. He had no affiliation with the Younger gang that ran with the James’ boys; robbing trains, and shooting up banks. He was more stupid than the Mexican, but knew how to fire a weapon. George Curry said he smelt worse than a Mexican, but not as bad as ‘the Chief,’ who was of course a Mexican. I guess that’s how they all got along so well. The truth be told, the girl took to those two idiots better than she thought she would. Even Bill Younger, who caused the black eye that first time they met.
***
They would meander across towns sometimes they’d stay for weeks. All the men stocked up on women aside from George Curry, who made no secret of his distaste for brothels. The girl showed no discouragements and found herself wondering about her father’s needs those years back. They found themselves in one town and one month since they last bathed. The girl had stopped caring more so than the men and as she was reaching womanhood, she did not care much for the others’ opinions for they’d smell worse. It was the silver mining town of Virginia City where Curry wanted to show his artistic pleasures; one being deception. His crimes of robberies were legendary in his own mind, yet he possessed no desire for fame or notoriety. It was pointing the gun, the shine of the nickel, and rarely was it ever used. Watching the women, the men. He said: ‘it was the men who pissed themselves first. It wasn’t the gun that they feared the most, it was my watchful eyes. They’d be scared I’d recognise them.’ He said, ‘they’d cooperate and wanted to give no reason for the man holding the gun to fire off a bullet.’ He’d say, ‘those guys don’t wanna look at the eyes. They don’t wanna make no identification to the sheriff. They just wanna hand over the coin and let them be gone.’ Curry also got a buzz from using no ammo, he just like to ‘watch em,’ and they’d hand over their cash, despite him using an unloaded gun. He told the girl it was fear that bring down these simple folk. Curry decided he wanted to rob a bank. He said, ‘Let’s make it this place. I don’t like this place.’ And that was that.
There’d be the railroad tracks on the edge of town. About five out of six trains would stop off, but the largest one with the cargo would ride on past and create all sorts of noise. That would be their signal, and once it had finished flying on by, they’d be off on their horses. That was how it went that next day. Curry’s crew were a person down on account of the chief and his dwindling nature. Curry walked right on in, announcing nothing but a cold-hearted promise to the cashier to ‘make you nothing but a memory’ before promising his assistant ‘a closed-casket funeral.’ The mark of this man was apparent, but Younger had other ideas, his knife trick didn’t go down well with one heroic gun-happy bystander, who shot him straight through his back, and into Younger’s victim’s jaw. You’d never seen a man with half his jaw swinging from his face try to curse at a man before. It was the girl who calmed things, a single gunshot put the bystander down. She became a natural with the killing, like she was back hunting again. Instinct. They were gone, cash in hand. No witnesses.
They’d been staying at the Gold Hill Hotel keeping their hats low a mile away from the town, but the day before the mid-morning robbery happened, the four of them stayed inside a deserted old barn and sat around a campfire. The Mexican cooked up some fresh game, plenty to go around, and Younger already acquired the whisky earlier that day. The girl sat trying to drink a few with Curry whilst cleaning out the barrel of her gun. Her father showed her the quickest way of doing it. He was the paranoid type, and thought that a man would be sat behind waiting to blow away his head with a rifle whilst his handgun was undergoing maintenance. The man often looked over at the girl and made pleasantries, as she was coy about being caught watching that chiselled face of his. She sure dealt with many deer in her time, but never dealt with no snake. Although she sure didn’t mind watching how his eyes moved; like a cougar’s but ‘much bluer’ she’d say. The girl couldn’t help the butterflies when Curry put Younger in his place. One look from that grand stare of his worked on anyone, including the girl. Younger kept himself quiet when he needed to, and kept most of his cheap shots at the girl when Curry was neither hide nor hair of earshot. It was of course Curry who made the first move. Telling the girl how he’d like to leave all this mess - Younger and the Mexican and start afresh somewhere, with someone. He’d let it known it would be with her, and even sounded sincere. Perhaps he was.
‘I know you said how you and your daddy was close, for I am sure you know I have the best intentions. But I bet he even sounded magnanimous in his own death before God.’
The girl gripped with a sharp whisper to Curry.
‘The hell you sayin’ to me?’
‘I mean he sounded like quite the man, even God himself would have been scared. Why he’d have said to him: my son Ned, please show me mercy for I’m about to sin! I’m afraid I must commit you to death right now, leave poor little Wendy all alone. Please forgive me.’
The girl just stared, and Curry laughed. The whisky even made his eyes smell bad, as his breath was like rotting meat. But she paid it no mind. Not really. She was reminded of her father’s stench those nights he came home. It was those needs, she thought. The needs of his, a widowed man with a kid, who lived among Greely’s Tavern: a whorehouse. Why she always thought her father was an honourable man, but he was just a man. A daughter’s company was not enough.
The night went on even further as the Mexican and Younger were passed out asleep. It was then that the girl wished for Curry to be more than just good with an unloaded gun. She thought about how one of those whores probably took care of her father, how alive he’d be during his ten seconds of ecstasy. As she bled when Curry plunged inside of her, she felt the numbness of that day subside. She forced herself to realise her father’s final moments, the Indian, what he might have looked like. Tall, strong and free of fear. He would do the utmost to protect his young. Maybe that’s what he was doing, her father dragged away into the hell mouth of that Indian as he was torn piece by piece and left to rot. It’s what always came to mind with this girl, for she didn’t know what happened to her father. She could only hear his screams as she ran away.
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