u/Abundant_Jar — reddlx

I weren’t always a killer.

It’s easy enough to write that, but I reckon you’d have a devil of a time believing it, considering what you may know about the blood on my hands.

If you don’t know, then, well…read on.

You’ll see.

If there is a God, if He hasn’t yet forsaken me for my sins, He will allow me to finish this, ‘fore my fingers go numb from blood loss, or the law finally catches up with me. Whichever comes first.

For this, this grim diary written in ink the color of old blood, is my confession, and, if God’s ears have deafened to the sound of my voice, I suppose you’ll just have to do.

I’ll start in that dusty sod house north of Laredo, though it’s been a long, long while since I’ve returned, and it hurts to think about almost as much as the slug in my gut.

My childhood, unhappy as it was, was all too short.

My ma was a Mexican whore who didn’t stick around long, and my pa was a cranky old sumbitch who hated Yankees near as much as he hated blacks, and refused to speak her name, no matter how much I pestered him.

My only good memories of her were fuzzy and half-gone, like a drawing what’s been soaked in water ‘fore the ink dries, but I knew she was beautiful. I knew she gave me my brown eyes and black hair. I only wish she’d stuck around a spell longer, but I couldn’t blame her for leaving.

If you knew my pa, I guess you wouldn’t blame her, neither.

In fact, I should’ve done the same. Maybe, if I had, things would’ve been different.

You see, Pa had fought in the war as a captain under General Ed Smith and had taken a musketball to the knee at the battle of Palmito Ranch (“And don’t you fuhget it, boy!”) that’d never really healed. Drink, he claimed, was the only thing that numbed both the ache in his leg and the bloody memories of the war.

When he drank, he drank heavy, and, more often than not, he got violent.

As a boy, I used to hate him for what he said and done when drunk, but, looking back, I think I understand better than I’d like to. After all, if I thought a bottle of whiskey would have a snowball’s chance in hell of making me forget any of what I done, I reckon I’d be dead of alcohol poisoning long ago.

And I know I ain’t the only one, neither.

The old man brought me up for the first twelve years of my life in the old sod house just outside Laredo. He built it for Ma after marrying her, but she hardly stayed long enough to enjoy it, and he seemed to blame me.

He farmed corn on the small acreage around the house and, although the plowing and the harvesting never failed to get that old bum knee of his acting up something fierce, he spent durn near every day out in them fields.

I think, now, that part of him liked the pain.

Every night, after dinner, he’d grumble about the shit I cooked over his bottle. Some nights, most nights, that grumbling would turn to yelling, and the yelling would turn to whupping.

Between Ma, the drink, the bruises, there was no love lost between me and the old man. On those long nights, when sleep came slow ‘cos the pain in my body and heart, I took grim comfort in the fact that he was no happier with our situation than I.

In fact, I soon learnt that he was a great deal less happy than I, when, one blistering summer night, as I lay nursing a fresh batch of bruises, Pa nearly drownt hisself in whiskey and, I guess, thought he’d try swallowing the barrel of his service pistol as a chaser.

I awoke from restless sleep to a sharp crack and the tang of gunsmoke to find my pa, sprawled in his rocking chair, top of his head gone all over the table where we ate our meals.

He was the first dead man I ever saw.

I wish, to this day, he was the last.

He left no note, no explanation, no goodbye to the miserable waste of life he’d squirted into the world, and I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t much care a shit.

By the time I packed my meager belongings and saddled up our haggard mule, Old Sal, the bastard’s sorry carcass hadn’t even gone cold.

When I got to the start of that path down to Laredo, though, I stood for a long time, looking back at the open, yawning door.

Deciding whether to bury him or not, I guess.

How long I stood, I cannot say, but when dawn sprinkled over the hills and chaparral, I was well on my way into town, and Pa remained unburied, the gunbarrel still in his mouth.

I’d wasted enough sweat on that sumbitch.

###

Work weren’t as easy to find in town as I’d hoped. Turnt out, most folk knew of my pa, and they didn’t like him anymore than I did.

I did my best to make do, though, and I didn’t care much what I was doing. I reckon some started recognizing the value in a little piece of work like myself who’d do all the jobs they didn’t want to. I even cleaned the jakes for a few weeks ‘fore that old cattleman passing through town took pity and offered me a job.

Allen Carver, of the Carver and Sons Cattle Company, was a thin, leathery man with a soft spot for young, down-on-their-luck boys, like myself. On account of his four down-on-their-luck sons, I guess.

Well, him and his boys were taking some nine-hundred head up Dodge City way for the railroad and, when Mr. Carver took me aside, I had a hard time believing that someone like me would be worth a hot cup of spit on a cattle drive.

Luckily, Mr. Carver had no illusions on that front, and didn’t expect me to be much help on the drive, neither. Their cook, a grizzled old veteran they called Hogface, had been complaining just about the whole way over from Coahuila that they were working him too hard and, after the work I done on the toilet out back of the biggest saloon in Laredo, Mr. Carver figured he could do a damn sight worse and offered me a job, on the spot. My only directive, “Keep ol’ Hogface from bellyaching to me, comprende?”

I learnt, soon enough, that that mostly meant doing all the jobs that Hogface didn’t much care for. I got real good real quick at gathering wood and buffalo chips for the fire, washing Hogface’s big old cast iron cookpot every night, and pouring the cowboys their morning coffees.

It weren’t glorious, by any stretch of the word, but I was content that I didn’t have to clean out the jakes no more. I didn’t know it then, but I believe that, that brief time I was under the employ of Carver and Sons, was the only time in my life I was ever happy.

Just like my childhood, it was too short.

Two months later, on the evening ‘fore we were set to cross the Red River, and less than a week from stepping into Indian Territory, crochety old Hogface sent me out for buffalo chips to get dinner going.

This mostly consisted of wandering a good ways away from the cow camp, far enough for the cow shits to be some measure of dry.

On my way past the cowboys, a few called my name, warning me to keep my eyes peeled for Indians.

Even though I knew they were joking, I didn’t stray quite as far as I usually did. If some of the cow flops I collected were a little soft, so what?

I’d take a smack from Hogface over getting scalped.

Soon, I managed to gather a decent bushelfull of bullshit that I thought even Hogface would like, and was just turning to mosey on back to camp when something caught my eye in the brush.

A glimmer of light, like a winking star.

When I think back on that moment, the fate of it, the providence that the moon would shine down on it just so, I can’t help but feel like it weren’t chance that sent me looking into that copse of chaparral.

It was calling to me.

And, God help me, I answered.

I’d scarcely started into the bush when I noticed the smell. I’d grown so used to the scents of manure and sweat that it stopped me dead in my tracks.

Something about it was familiar, like the metal of Pa’s old plow when he’d sat it out in the weather too long and gone all rusty. That, and the musk of old, old leather.

A hard, bad stench.

No smell like that could be good, I knew, and I nearly turnt back except…that little glint just kept on winking at me.

I pressed on.

Branches scratched my face, and the smell grew strong enough to move past my nose and into the back of my throat.

I didn’t see the body till I durn near tripped over it.

As I caught my balance and saw the full horror lying afore me, I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came forth. I begged my legs to run, but they locked in place.

The only dead man I’d seen before this was my own father, dead in my own home, and somehow, this was worse. Dear lord, it was so much worse.

The first thing that registered to my young mind was that the buzzards had left him alone. The wolves and the rats, too. In fact, it seemed everything had, except for the sun, of course, which had made his flesh to jerky and his bones as white as porcelain.

He was a white man, or used to be, though his skin had long gone the color of dust.

His hair, long and wiry, was short-cropped, and the bushy beard sprouting from what remained of his face looked like the type I’d seen some old buffalo hunters wearing as they passed through Laredo. His eyes were gone, dried and deflated in their sockets until they were nothing but holes, but I could still see the look of horror burnt into them.

What clothes remained were rags.

I finally saw the object that had winked at me from the prairie. A shiny revolver. Colt Navy. This, I wouldn’t have known at the time, if not for the fact that it was the same model my pa had.

Just like Pa, his paper lips were wrapped around the barrel of the Colt, like it was the neck of a bottle, and the top of his skull was split off in a jagged edge. Brain was spattered across the stony ground in pale chunks that’d dried in the sun and formed a pattern that looked almost like a bush of daisies.

Again, I should’ve run, but I didn’t. As horrible as the sight of this body was, the gun was twice as alluring.

This gun, that ruint my life as easy as a cyclone ripping through a sod house.

This gun, whose metal seemed to gleam and shine as if it were freshly polished, despite sitting in the Texas sun for weeks.

When I crouched, I could just see the words carved into the handle, Nemo Evadis, though I wouldn’t learn their meaning yet.

To this day, I don’t remember snatching it from the man’s mouth and tucking it under my shirt, but I know that, when I returned with Hogface, Mr. Carver, and damn near the whole camp in tow, it was gone.