Fiction — July 12, 2011 14:08 — 0 Comments

A Fragile Dawn – Daniel Davis

The breaking sunlight speared through the pines, reflecting off the snow and startling my horse.  I hadn’t been riding it very long—my last one was shot out from under me—and it tried to buck me, but I held tight and fought back.  Wilcox watched with what may have been amusement.  Perch, our employer, looked disgusted, even though he’d been the one to pick the horse for me in the first place.

“Don’t mess up the tracks,” he said, spitting into the middle of the nearest footprint.  As an after thought, he added, “Goddammit.”

I got the horse calmed and didn’t look his way.  Wilcox sidled up next to me, deliberately walking through a set of tracks.  Perch either didn’t notice or didn’t dare comment.

Perch got down and knelt next to the footprints.  He picked a bloody nail out of one.  Fabric clung to the sharpened tip.

“Nigger tracks,” he said.  “Wounded nigger, at that.”  He dropped the nail and played with his mustache.  “Guess that means it’s one of Obie Johnson’s kids, like I reckoned.  Probably Franklin, the youngest.  He’s a damn sneak, even by nigger standards.”

“Obie Johnson,” Wilcox said.  He waited for Perch to explain; when the man said nothing, Wilcox turned to me.  “Name mean anything to you, Horace?”

“No it don’t.”  I lit a cigarette I’d rolled just a few minutes before.  “Apparently he ain’t a white man.”

“I told you not to smoke,” Perch said.  “Obie Johnson’s some damn slave you Yanks freed during the War.  Came up here with another freed nigger, had himself a bunch of kids, then grandkids.  Franklin’s the youngest of the bunch, been causing problems in town.  Drinking, carousing.  Has a thing for women, and not his own kind.”

“Surprised you good ol’ boys ain’t hanged him yet,” I said, slurring my words to mimic the accent that Perch, clearly a Northerner by birth, lacked.

“We’re gonna,” he said.  “If I don’t shoot him first, that is.”

“If you shoot him,” Wilcox pointed out, “you won’t get your silver back.”

“Hell, I can afford more silver.”  Perch mounted his horse.  He nodded westward, against the sun.  “Obie’s hole is that way, ’bout two miles.  We can get there before dawn’s up.”

He led the way, as he had since town.  I rode beside Wilcox, who had holstered his Winchester and was taking in the scenery.  It’d been a while since we’d ridden this far north, and the pine trees and snow seemed exotic next to the sand and rock we were used to.   We’d stumbled aimlessly upon Harper’s Point, the town about five miles back.  It hadn’t taken long for someone to hire us on; we looked like men who’d ridden hard, who’d used our guns and were good with them.  Wilcox hadn’t wanted to take a job, but I had, and he’d gone with me in that obliging way he usually has.  His silence was its own complaint, though he’d begun taking small pleasure in mocking Perch.  I’d never known Wilcox to have a sense of humor; most men rubbed him the wrong way, but he either glared at them until they left, or shot them.  He probably, like me, respected Perch’s money, if not the man himself.  Perch was a banker, and the mayor’s brother.  He’d told us as much in the hotel lobby, as the clerk gave us a strange look and the other clientele—for it was just fancy enough a place to call its customers “clientele”—avoided us.

It’d been a while since a man of Perch’s stature had approached Wilcox and myself with anything resembling good intent.  I hadn’t seen a decent amount of money in months; most of the food and whiskey we got came courtesy of Wilcox’s intimidating figure.  He’d trimmed his beard a few days before, but it was still unruly and tangled.  I kept mine as short as I could manage, though it was spotty.  Couldn’t grow a beard for the life of me.  But when you wear a Colt on your hip, it doesn’t really matter.

Some animal made a noise in the trees.  Perch stopped ahead of us, glancing around.  I could see his hand inching towards his rifle, but after a few seconds of tense silence he relaxed and continued on.  He didn’t give us an explanation.  I glanced at Wilcox, who acted as though nothing had happened.  I scanned the trees.  Whatever had made the noise was big—probably a bear.  But I couldn’t see anything.

The sun on the back of my neck did little to warm me.  The cold felt good, invigorating, but after a while it seeped too far into you, chilled your marrow, made you freeze from the inside out.  I’d purchased a worn coat in town, something almost as old as I was.  It had long ago surrendered against the dawn, and now merely hung limp off my shoulders, defeated.  My horse gave off little heat—it was as cold as I was, and trudged along only because that’s what horses do.  I reckoned, sitting there thinking of the money Perch had handed over, that I was little better.

It took a while to reach Obie Johnson’s stead, though we could see the smoke from a long ways off.  If he knew he was hiding a fugitive, he gave little sign of being concerned.  When we finally reached a clearing in the trees, we found the old man standing out front of his decent-sized cabin, leaning on a shotgun.  His back was hunched and his legs bowed, but he stared hard at us as we rode up to within a few feet from him and dismounted.  His face was cracked, his hands large and calloused; his gaze passed coolly over me, lingered a moment longer on Wilcox, then settled back on Perch.

“Well,” he said, watching as Perch propped his rifle against his side.  The old man’s voice was faint, whispery—if there had been a strong breeze, I wouldn’t have been able to hear him.

“Obie,” Perch said.  He glanced at me and Wilcox for a moment, frowning when he saw we hadn’t drawn our guns.  Then he looked over the cabin, the surrounding clearing.  There was a well a few feet away, a grill pit, some lose ends.  An outhouse was nestled against the very edge of the forest.  The cabin could hold a modest-sized family, but was showing its years.  The chimney through which the smoke exited was pockmarked and ragged; a strong storm and it would probably crumble.

“Where’s your kin?” Perch asked.  “Ain’t there usually a whole bunch of young niggers running around here?”

“Sent ’em off,” Johnson said.  He grinned.  “They ‘fraid of townsfolk.  White men are a terrifyin’ bunch.”

“And the boy?”

Johnson glanced at me and Wilcox again.  “Brought some hired hands.”  I could tell, by his gaze, that he hated us.  I didn’t blame him.

“Men who know how to bring fugitives to justice.  Where’s the boy, Obie?”

“Gone off with ’em.”  The old man coughed.  I wondered if he would even be able to fire that shotgun without knocking himself on his ass.  “Had to coerce the hell out of him, but I got him to go.”

“No you didn’t.”  Perch pointed towards a pair of boots resting against the cabin door.  “He stole those from Amos Anderson last week.  He’s somewhere ’round here without his footwear.”

Johnson didn’t bother turning around.  “Well hell.  Guess I done forgot about those.  Guess you won’t have much trouble finding him, if’n he ain’t got his boots.”

“Ain’t no reason to draw this out,” Perch said.  “I don’t like talking to you any better than I like looking at you.  Tell me where he is and we can get the hell out of here.”

“You never come for him before,” Johnson said.  “Just walk away now.  Whatever he took’ll be returned, you have my word.”

“The word of a nigger is only as good as his blood, which ain’t good for nothing.  Don’t make me go in there and get him myself.  Call him out.”

“Franklin,” the old man said over his shoulder.  He didn’t bother raising his voice.  “Franklin.  Yo, boy.”  He shrugged.  “Guess he ain’t here.”

Perch’s grip tightened on the rifle.  I noticed Johnson’s arm muscles tensing.  I glanced at Wilcox, and when I turned back, Johnson was watching me.  He knew that I knew, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest.

“We’re gonna hang him,” Perch said.  “I want you to know that.  We’ll hang him, and we just might hang any other of your kin who returns to Harper’s Point.  You ain’t wanted here.”

“Shoot,” the old man said.  “And I love it here so.”

Perch was fast, but the old man was faster.  He was weakened by age, but not as much as he’d let on.  The shotgun was up and firing a moment before Perch’s rifle thundered.  Buckshot caught Perch across his face, chest, and abdomen.  Some tore my coat sleeve, and blood sprayed into my eye.  Perch’s bullet caught Johnson in the face; the old man buckled and fell almost instantly, while Perch remained standing for a moment, body shaking.  His rifle fired again, hitting the cabin, then it slipped from his fingers into the snow.  He followed it after a moment, crumbling onto his side.  He lay in his blood, twitching.

I hadn’t bothered to draw.  I wiped the blood from my eye and spat into the snow.  Mine and Perch’s horses had taken off, huddling together in the pines.  Wilcox’s horse was as calm as the man himself—they both stood watching the scene.

There was a noise from behind the cabin.  “Shit,” I said, and hesitated.  I looked at Wilcox, but he was staring at the old man’s ruined face.  I made a decision and ran around the side of the cabin.  I saw a thin black wraith slipping into the forest, heading westward.  I fired a couple of shots after him; one must’ve hit, because he stumbled and fell from my sight.

On foot, the forest was treacherous, fallen branches and debris hidden beneath the snow.  I tried following the path the boy had taken, noticing occasional dots of blood from his wounded foot.  About where I’d seen him fall, I found more blood.  The snow had been disturbed, but there was no sign of him.

I sensed the tree branch a moment before it collided with the back of my head.  It was rotten, though, and broke against my skull.  I fell to my knees in his blood, twisting and firing blindly.  He screamed at me, full of rage and hate, and fell against my Colt.  My last bullet was fired point-blank into his gut; blood splashed across my hand and chest, and his last breath extinguished itself against my throat.  His weight drove me down into the snow.  He was young and small, but his death made him heavier.

When I was able to stand, I glanced over him.  Not old, about fourteen.  I’d killed younger in the war, but that had been different.  He was handsome—the women of Harper’s Point probably loved him as much as he did them.  He looked nothing like the old man—two generations removed from the hardships Obie Johnson had endured, though in the end both had fallen victim to the same hatred.

I carried the boy back to the cabin.  Wilcox cocked an eye at my blood-soaked figure but made no comment.  He’d rounded up the other horses.  I set the boy beside his grandfather and glanced at Perch, who was now motionless, face slack.

“Cabin’s empty,” Wilcox said.

I nodded.  It took us the rest of the day to dig two graves in the frozen ground.  When we were done, we used the shovels for headstones.  We drug Perch’s body into the pines, and tied his horse up at the cabin, making sure it had enough food and water to last until someone came along.  It complained as we rode away, calling after us, but eventually its cries were lost in the pines and the cold of the approaching night.

Bio:

Daniel Davis recently received his Master's from Eastern Illinois University. His work has most recently appeared in

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The answer isn't poetry, but rather language

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