Ag wants a pie. A hot, flaky, buttery apple pie, the kind his mother makes. A big, thick slice of pie, with whipped cream on top. He’s wanted one for miles. It’s the only thing he can think of, mile after dreary, sore-assed mile, even over the sounds of his brother’s constant griping. It’s taken Ag an entire day and night to get over his hangover, his queasy guts and headache; when he finally had, he just wanted that pie. Even though, at first, while puking all over his horse’s neck, he’d been sure he’d never want to eat again – certainly never drink – now he wants a pie. Maybe when or if they get to Portland, he can find one at a café. Probably not as good as Mama’s, but he wants a pie.
“I tell you, Ag, I don’t like her,” Sol is saying, for the hundredth time. “She’s uppity.”
Ag knows now that he isn’t cut out for the outlaw’s life. He’d suspected it before, but now he’s certain, one hundred percent. When Elizabeth McDaniel had ridden into their camp and Sol had tackled her, Ag had never been so scared. He’d been too terrified to shoot and had a sneaking suspicion that he’d crapped his pants the tiniest amount. That night had been even scarier than when Sol had killed the man in Twin Falls; that saloon hadn’t been some dark campsite in the middle of nowhere, and there hadn’t been a posse after them, then, come to hang or shoot them.
“Do you see the way she squints at me, when she’ll deign to even fucking talk to me? Like I smell funny to her. I smell like a man, goddamn it, and that’s the way I’m going to smell.”
It’s easy to ignore Sol; Ag has long practice at it. His brother has been griping and bitching about Elizabeth McDaniel for the last two days, but Ag notices that Sol rarely takes his eyes off her for long, that he looks at her when he thinks no one else is watching. He knows his brother and it’s easy to tell that Sol is sweet on her. Or maybe it’s just that Sol’s pride is wounded because she won’t give him the time of day. She is a bit uppity, maybe, but, after all, Sol had tackled her off her horse and damn near punched her in the face.
Ag could never have just jumped up on a stranger and tackled them like that, girl or not. He simply isn’t a fighter, not in the same way Sol is. Or, maybe, how Sol is trying to convince himself he is, with the cursing and the whiskey and the rest of it. Trying on something he isn’t. Oh, Ag will wrestle and slap at Sol but, when it comes to fighting for real, he just doesn’t have it in him. Maybe, once, he’d thought he had, like most boys, particularly those with brothers; no one likes to admit that they aren’t tough. Men are supposed to be tough, after all. In a way, it’s almost a relief to realize now that, when it comes right down to it, he isn’t. He just isn’t, so he doesn’t have to worry about it any more. Sol may think he’s a fighter but, really, it’s only because he’s always acted first and thought about it later. Ag is different. Some people might think him slow, but he’s just cautious. He likes to think things through. He doesn’t think that outlaws are, as a general rule, supposed to be cautious.
“And don’t even start me on the liquor, Rideout,” Sol says, bitterly. Once again. “What kind of fucking woman smashes three perfectly good bottles of whiskey – the last goddamn whiskey for miles, I might add – just to make a point? It wasn’t even hers!” He shakes his head, angrily, looking up the trail at Miss McDaniel’s back. Once again.
Really, it had been a relief when Elizabeth had broken those last bottles, Ag thinks. He’d been so whiskey-sick at the time, though, that even the smell of the bottles leaking their contents out into the rocks had set him to puking again. That was another thing: outlaws are supposed to be able to drink, and he just has no skill at it. If he never saw another bottle, it would be too soon. Sol had raised a ruction, though, carrying on and hollering; Mr McDaniel had kind of just deflated, looking miserable. Had Ag himself been less sick, at the time, he might have thought that Miss McDaniel had looked her prettiest then, all fired up with anger. It had given her a high color that Ag would normally have found quite fetching. She’s pretty enough, in general, although he doesn’t quite see whatever it is that Sol sees in her. It’s nice to have a pretty girl to rest one’s eyes on from time to time, though, he thinks, something to break the monotony of the horses’ asses, visually speaking.
“Are you even fucking listening to me, Ag?”
And now there’s this pie he can’t get his mind off. Outlaws must like pie, he supposes, but probably they weren’t obsessed about it like he seems to be. A posse could ride right up to them, this very minute, hanging ropes in hand, and he’d quietly go with them if they had that pie. Really he just wants to go home, even though he’s terribly embarrassed at the utter wreck he and Sol have made of things since they’d left the ranch. At this point, he’s willing to go crawling right back, though. Or, if not back to the ranch, maybe just to a town where they could get quiet jobs and not have to shoot people or tackle girls or get so drunk, where they could stay put and not have to feel the wind and the dust and stare at the backsides of horses all day. He realizes that the pie is maybe just one of those what-are-they-called, metaphors, for something else, for safety and security and family and not having to live an outlaw’s life any more. Although he’d eat a whole damn pie if he had one right now.
Sol spurs his horse forward, away from his brother. Ag isn’t even listening to him; his brother has been quiet and subdued for a couple days now. Surely he can’t still be sick. The boy cannot hold his liquor – that is a fact – but even he can’t still be sick two days later, can he? Lately Ag just won’t talk much, won’t hold up his end of a conversation. Sol had needled him with some of the usual subjects that are generally guaranteed to kick up a lively argument, but Ag just muttered and grunted and moped along. It made for boring travel.
He closes a bit of the distance between Ag and Elizabeth McDaniel, looking at her back. The sun has a way of catching her hair where it sticks out of her wide, man’s hat, making a kind of sparkle around her shoulders. He’s tried to engage her in conversation on a few occasions, but she always just gives him that pinched look, the one that says that David Solomon Parker isn’t a fit fucking conversationist for the likes of Her Majesty Elizabeth McGoddamnDaniel. It chafes him powerfully, that look. He enjoys a woman with some vinegar, but this girl is entirely too full of herself. Even if she does have that sparkly hair and those green eyes. It seems like the dirtier and dustier her face gets from travel, the greener those eyes are. He’d apologized for the misunderstanding of that first night, after all, but all he ever gets from the girl is that narrow stare. Which is irksome as all hell.
Sol needs someone to talk to, some way of passing the miles, but Ag is useless, Elizabeth is icy, and Josiah McDaniel is sunk into some private misery, even worse than Ag. The man has had some sad misfortunes, true, and is likely now feeling the lack of liquor, but sometimes a man just needs to button up his pants and move on, as his mother would have said, to just fucking get over it. Perhaps some conversation would take Josiah’s mind off his troubles; does no one ever think about that?
Sol knows his own mind needs distraction as, mile after mile, he’s still fretting, more and more, about this job they’ve taken on, whether they shoot that man in Portland or just rob Josiah McDaniel and get on their goddamn way, as he wants to do. Sol hasn’t even bothered to try to convince Ag yet that it’s the right plan of action, robbing Josiah, for the seed money to get them settled and away from the Idaho law, get them started in a respectable career running girls or selling liquor or the like; deep down, Sol himself isn’t entirely convinced. He doesn’t want to do either thing, murder or robbery, when it comes right to it. It had been hard enough when it was just the fucking dentist but, now that the sister is along, both plans look to have large and unsavory holes in them. He doesn’t think that Elizabeth McDaniel is the type to take kindly to killing or robbing and, given that she’d up and ridden halfway across two states just to round up her brother, Sol worries that she’d hare off after him and Ag if they did something she didn’t fancy. He wouldn’t be surprised if she rode up and fucking shot them herself, from the looks she gives him. It was one thing to tackle a young lady – inadvertently and completely understandably, given the situation – but Sol knows that he doesn’t have it in him, getting in a gunfight with a girl.
He mopes along, trying to think his way out of this mess they’ve got themselves in, to come up with something that doesn’t involve just giving the money back to the dentist and leaving. They need that money. Without it, what are they going to do, then? Go slinking back home, prove to their mama that they’re indeed nothing but a couple of fools? Sit around the ranch and wait for a posse to come from Twin Falls and string them up? Hell no, but it’s a conundrum, what they should do, and one that Sol is having difficulty cracking open. He watches Elizabeth’s back and that sun-sparkly hair, wishing that someone would just talk to him.
Elizabeth’s rage has mostly burned itself out by now, but she’s plagued with low-level vexation at the situation in general. Josiah hasn’t spoken to her since she broke the whiskey bottles – an act that was for his own good, after all – and the Parker boy speaks to her too much. A few times a day he comes near her and tries to engage in some idiotic pleasantry, clearly not understanding that she has much on her mind and no desire for chitchat with the likes of him. She doesn’t like to be rude, as a general rule, but she needs time to think, to figure out the best way to get her brother off of this stupid quest of his and back home where he can start to heal.
At least they’re heading in the direction of Baker City; surely something would happen between now and then to persuade Josiah that he has to quit this lunacy. If nothing else, Elizabeth wonders if she can simply have some of her students and their burly brothers stop him by main force. It might technically be kidnapping but, after some time, Josiah would thank her. He’s making her nervous, now that he’s sober; this black, wordless depression he’s in seems far worse than his alcoholic excess. Perhaps she should have left the bottles. She didn’t think it was possible for someone to just give up on living, to stop breathing and will his heart to stop but, seeing Josiah, she worries. He won’t talk, won’t eat, just sits slumped on his horse all day and then curls up under a blanket immediately after they stop at night.
She hears Mr Parker’s horse ambling up behind her again, and spurs her own horse forward, clenching her shoulders. Damn the man. He isn’t quite what she expected a hired gunman would be like, though, even given her first introduction, when he’d yanked her off her horse. He doesn’t seem overtly hard or cruel, stupid or mean. He’s ignorant, certainly, to hear his flowery, grammatically-tortured speech – when he isn’t simply cursing – but, more often than not, he smiles when he speaks to her and seems to be genuinely protective of his brother, even as he gripes at him all day. Both of them seem callow, a bit innocent even, not the hardened killers she’d expected or that Mr Parker had intimated they were. Maybe – likely, even – they’re charlatans, just common swindlers looking for an opportunity to rob Josiah and herself. They might have Josiah’s money now but they certainly won’t be keeping it or getting a cent more, not while she is with them.
They can’t be terribly far away from Baker City by now. She’ll think of something before then and get this whole vexing situation straightened out. She has her students to return to, after all. Josiah is family, but she can’t spend the rest of her life taking care of him. In Baker City she’ll get him back on track and they can both return to their own lives. A dentist can always find work.
Josiah doesn’t even notice the wagon that’s slowly coming their way, even though he’s far out ahead of the others. He doesn’t seem to see much at all these days; the world is just an endless procession of sage and dust and then hills and trees. Much of the time he doesn’t even have his eyes open, just ambles his horse along, half-asleep. He isn’t much of a rider and his buttocks are sore and chafed but even that doesn’t hold his attention. In a distant way he realizes he’s uncomfortable, but it doesn’t really matter. Now that the whiskey is gone there’s no good way to remove himself from his constant thoughts of Mary and all that’s happened.
He’s just so tired. In the morning he wakes up more exhausted than when he’d gone to bed, even though as soon as they camp he falls asleep immediately. The dreams are just too bad, too close and hot, without the liquor to keep them at bay. Riding tires him out even further; sometimes he feels that he doesn’t even have the energy to stay on his horse and he just wants to slump off into the dust. If he didn’t know that Elizabeth or one of the others would pick him up, he might just do that, lie there in the brush and sleep forever.
Josiah doesn’t even care about killing Dr Hedwith any more. It’s pointless. Maybe the man had had nothing to do with Mary’s death, maybe it had just been a terrible accident. Even if it wasn’t, he supposes that it was the men who sold the stuff at the traveling show that are really to blame, even if they didn’t actually make the medicine. His memories of that night are so twisted and strange; even now he doesn’t know what happened. There might not even be a Dr Hedwith; maybe that was just a name that the other doctor, Potter, uses for his product. Josiah doesn’t really know where his obsession with Hedwith came from. He supposes it was because he has the bottle with the man’s name and business address on it, that it’s merely something concrete he can fix his mind on. Rather than just the memory of some vagabonding collection of peddlers, who had been long gone again by the time he regained something of his sanity, after losing Mary. But it doesn’t matter: Mary is gone and revenge has no savor any more. Perhaps it had just been an artifact of the whiskey. Or, maybe, it’s the Almighty’s way of telling him that he is on the wrong path. They’re headed to Portland now, though, and they might as well just keep going; it’s too much effort to come up with something else to do.
He vaguely notices Parker trotting his horse past, followed by Elizabeth. Opening his tired, gummy eyes, Josiah looks up, mildly startled to see another traveler on the road, an old man and young girl in a battered wagon. When Josiah gets closer, he hears them talking about local news with Sol and Elizabeth, the state of the road and the weather in Baker City and events of note. He moves his horse to the side and is riding past them, not wanting to talk, not caring about Baker City or the weather or any of it, when he hears something that cuts through his fogged mind.
“Show in Baker, you know,” the old man is saying. “Patent medicine. Got ’em a African strongman and a Chinaman tell your fortune and a magic man.”
Josiah stops his horse, looking over, startled. “What did you just say?” he asks in a whisper. “What did you just say?” He repeats it, stronger.
The old man spits a stream of tobacco off the side of the wagon. With his long, white beard he looks like a prophet. “Medicine show, son. Got ’em a pretty French girl that sings the opera too.” He spits again, squinting his eyes, a ray of sun catching his face.
For the first time in many days, Josiah’s heart speeds up, the muscle punching against his ribs. When he’d doubted the Lord, in this, his darkest hour, he’s been given a sign. Even though he doesn’t deserve it, even though he’s let himself turn to drink and self-pity and thoughts of death. Even though he’d abandoned his faith, he has not been forgotten. Josiah feels tears hot in his eyes and a burning in his belly as his spirit rekindles. He spurs his horse forward into a fast trot.
“Where on earth are you going, Josiah?” Elizabeth yells.
“Change of plan, Mr Parker!” Josiah shouts over his shoulder, ignoring his sister. He calls back something else that is lost. He feels bright and hard inside, full of life again, just like that. Just like that. He is the righteous hammer of the Lord, he sees it now. In his time of need the Almighty has come to him. Josiah spurs his horse on even faster, bouncing in the saddle at the ragged gallop.
Elizabeth and Sol look at each other, baffled. Ag comes trotting up, a curious look on his face. “What’s going on, Sol? Why’s he riding off like that?”
“Boy really wants to see that show, I reckon,” the old man in the wagon says, smiling beatifically at them, spitting again. “Sings like an angel, that girl,” he adds. “Like the sound of heaven.”