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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2018 2:32:39 GMT -5
yadda yadda, page for @borderline and myself. I'll add the rest and make it look pretty sometime tomorrow.
just wanted to get this post off lmao
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2018 2:33:18 GMT -5
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold and the lonesomeness, he reached out and touched the chilled, familiar outlines of his belongings: tobacco tin, glass bottle, rucksack, still tightly closed as he’d left it when sleep took him however long ago. His only ritual. He ran lithe fingers over the revolver on his belt and then laid still, listening outside the thin canvas walls of the tent. He finally heard the soft huff of precious breath from the horse that he stole and was somewhat satisfied. After some time he gave up on trying to listen for the people he was sure were tracking him down and closed his eyes once more until he drifted off into a dreamless, half-aware state of laying still.
He finally rose when the sky was light grey. The man man was all cracking joints, popping bones, moving at first like someone twice or three times his age—it looked strange on his visage, youthful and wiry wiry. Before packing his things, he stretched, squatted, surveyed the land sprawling before him. It felt like early fall to him in this foreign land, with its mountains and cliffs and rivers and trees and hidden, dangerous things deep in the dark places. He was one of those things, but he didn’t know it and wouldn’t care if he did. The chill in the air invigorated him.
The landscape in front of him was barren. Silent, unmoving, godless yet brimming with the strength of one, solitudinous as it all was. For some reason he couldn’t name, the place felt more homelike than any other place he’d lived in. It was apt. He was the only man he ever saw on these slopes, only man he knew that could make it work for him. His bath was that frigid river, his floor the earth, his ceiling the unblinking sky, endless. The land was him, too; soil hard, unyielding to the most persistent of farmers, winds and sky unforgiving, delivering judgement on a whim, a turn of the weather.
The two of them came to life slowly. The horse, black as pitch, glossy, rippling with muscle, grunted, lifted its grand head to repeat the same gesture of its de facto owner. Then it began to graze idly. The grass was hard and dry in the wilderness, or this part of it, at least. The best was in town. Both of them knew they had to go to town at some point; it’d been a few days.
He raised his face to the paling day, grimaced at it. Green eyes wide, filled with the new light, smoldering. He wasn’t very hungry for food. When the silence and stillness finally became too much to bear, he rose to his feet once more, all dust and streaked with grime and God knows what, and began fitting the saddle on that tall horse made of stone.
x x Going to town was always risky. People were going to start to recognize him one day, so he thought it best to tread lightly. He’d go only when he needed to. Medicine, ammunition, things for the horse, odds and ends. A stiff drink. The rest could be scavenged, more or less.
A solitary ranch soon broke the seemingly endless canvas of dying grass and blue sky. Looming house of pristine white paint, flanked by a fence. Sheep grazed aimlessly. He paused atop the horse. Listened. He thought he heard voices at first, maybe some kind of laughter. When he stopped moving he realized it was just the wind. Then he prodded his spurs into the beast’s grand sides and they approached it.
He stepped down on sure feet at the back side of the house in front of what he thought was a storeroom; a good-sized building, no windows, closed off with a padlock. The man drew his revolver, took a step back, and shot it. The sound echoed. Only the horse batted an eye. One of those grand doors that was taller than him opened, and he pried it open further with a creak. Barrels manifested with the light, stacked and stacked until the ceiling made them dark. Sacks on sacks on sacks of grain. On a shelf, preserves, strips of curing meat.
Those emerald greens of his glistened. He lurched and took as many of the jars as he could, until they tumbled out of his arms and rolled off into the dark and dust. It was a crazed effort. Moving with the desperation of a coyote. It wasn’t until he heard the cocking of a shotgun from somewhere behind him that he thought for a moment that he wasn’t entirely alone, and he stopped, but didn’t set down what he carried just yet.
The young man stared into the double barrel without fear. In fact, the gun owner himself seemed more shaken. A shorter, older man with patchy stubble. He could’ve maybe been his shadow, if you were generous.
It took him a while to speak. Neither of them moved. “None a’ that’s yours, son,” he finally told him. Had the voice of a long time smoker but lacked the usual conviction of one.
Maybe he recognized him. Maybe some part of that unnervingly calm gaze reminded him of a story he’d heard at the saloon downtown, of some young stallion of a man that lacked any kind of anything. He didn’t receive an answer, so he began making a bargain. “Why don’t you put back what you—“
He was cut off by the younger man digging into the front pocket of his jeans, shifting the preserves to the crook of his other arm. The shotgun was lowered slightly. “Let’s play a game.” Voice was light. He drew a single quarter out of his pocket, shining bright silver in the dust and cobwebs and low light.
The older fellow frowned. The young man almost grinned at him. “Heads or tails?”
“.. Tails.”
The dark-haired kid flipped the coin off his thumb, watched it twirl and do somersaults until it landed back into the palm of his hand. He closed his hand, hesitated, then opened it again. “Well I’ll be damned.” Sounded somehow crestfallen. He couldn't explain why he did to the other man though. Not because he couldn't, but because it was sick. Then he slipped the quarter back into his pocket and began to place the jars back in their respective places.
The other man looked dumbfounded but tried to hide it. The shotgun was raised once more, but the double barrels trembled. “Where you from, boy?” He asked. “Ain’t heard an accent like that before.”
“Missouri.” Didn’t think his answer would incriminate him much, since he certainly intended on taking back that one standard of morality he held later that night; strawberry preserves were worth quite a lot to him, and they didn’t come up often.
He grunted. “What’s your name?”
He’d finished the task by then. The young man stood up, straightened, and met his inferior’s gaze. “It’s Montgomery.”
x x That old fellow was a fool for lettin’ me off the hook so easily. This was almost going to be too low. Took all the fun out of something he enjoyed in a strange way. Every time something like this happened and he did something, he learned a little more about people and what they did when things got real serious. He didn’t learn anything from the man guarding his preserves. A straight up fool.
But he’s gonna learn somethin’ from me. The kid was resolute, watching that house like a hawk from a far-off hill as time passed. When something got into his bear-trap mind, it stayed there until he killed it with action. He was still as stone until the still night came, and some windows in that house glowed orange, then were finally extinguished.
When he moved this time, it was smug. Like a cat walking on a fence, tail held high. He knew what he was doing this time around, had the time and obsession to make a plan. He dismantled the meager rope set to secure that broken lock with ease. Then silently took jars of those preserves into his arms and moved them to the bags on the horse. It didn’t take him long to fill those pockets.
When he was satisfied, he drew two things out of the bag on his shoulders. A box of matches and that bottle of his that he liked to refill when he could. He eyed the plain thing for a moment, wondering if he’d really miss it, then tore a piece of drape off something hanging in the storeroom and stuffed it inside. Then he struck a match, lit the cloth. He’d heard about something like this before. Couldn't read, but word of mouth was something mighty powerful in his life.
He took in his surroundings one last time, maybe privately marveling at the handiwork of the place, then tossed the bottle. A crash of glass preceded the gust of flame, greedy fire that licked the ground and climbed on everything it saw. Rhett watched, face lit. Eyes were calm. Then he approached the now nervous horse and they galloped off into the night before he could admire his work for very much longer. It wasn’t long until he thought about that strawberry spread on some biscuits.
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